05/02/2013
NEWS STORY
Jenson Button topped the timesheets on the first day of pre-season testing despite a problem which sidelined him for much of the day. Meanwhile, problems for Mercedes too as Nico Rosberg's car catches fire following a wiring loom fault.
While all eleven teams were on duty today, Williams used its 2012 car, its 2013 contender not due to be launched until the first day of the forthcoming Barcelona test. All the cars that have been unveiled over the last week were in action, even the Caterham and Marussia that were only revealed this morning.
Button's morning's was compromised by a mechanical fuel-pump issue, which cost a couple of hours' track-time, but the problem was eventually rectified and the team was able to run productively for the remainder of the afternoon.
Button spent the first part of the day's programme running a lower-lip rake to complete some aero mapping work. The end of the day saw the team evaluate the effects of a series of mechanical set-up changes, using both the Supersoft and Hard tyres.
Both the aero mapping and the balance changes fell in line with the team's pre-test expectations. Button set his fastest time of the day on the hard compound.
Sergio Perez gets his first opportunity to drive a McLaren tomorrow, the knock-on effects of this morning's fuel-pump issue mean that he will begin his day by continuing today's initial aero and balance checks.
The aim for the afternoon is to conduct a series of longer runs - possibly incorporating live pit-stops into the mix if the team is satisfied with the day's initial progress.
Just 48 hours after Red Bull RB9 was unveiled in Milton Keynes, the new car took to the track with Mark Webber at the wheel, the Australian completing 73 laps. His best lap was the second quickest time of the day and left the Australian greatly encouraged ahead of his seventh season with the team.
"It was pretty good," beamed Webber. "As Adrian said at the launch, there haven't been big changes to the regulations this year and the car is an evolution of the one we finished with last season, so there were no big surprises. I think most of the drivers will sit back tonight and think today's times were pretty competitive.
"It was actually like a Friday practice session in some regards," he continued. "We started understanding the tyres and there were a lot of positives. There's a bit of housekeeping we have to get on top of but, other than that, it's been encouraging.
"The car feels similar to last year's, so the main difference is the tyres. With these tyres you're always on your toes. It was good that we had consistent temperatures today, so we got a lot of information and feedback to analyse, which is all good. Generally though, the car feels pretty good, so I'm happy."
"We had a very good day's running today," added Engineering Co-ordinator, Andy Damerum. "Being the first day of testing there's always a few nerves when the car goes out, but we had very few problems and Mark managed to get through just over 323km of running.
"We were able to get through about 90% of what was on the list for today. If I recall, this time last year we couldn't run in the morning because of fog, so this first day with the RB9 has been good. Tomorrow, we'll just crack on with the work load, which means more aero work and getting to know the tyres more."
At Lotus, Romain Grosjean was the pace-setter for much of the day, finally ending the afternoon with the third quickest time. The Frenchman completed 54 laps as the team went through its programme of shakedown and assessment.
"The feeling is good from the E21," said Grosjean, "it feels very similar to the E20 from behind the wheel, even if it does look different from the outside. Once again Enstone has produced a car that is quick from the very first lap.
"We spent a little bit more time than ideal in the garage today," he continued, "but that's normal in testing. I'm happy we completed 54 laps, and even happier that all of them were quick. We now have a good idea of the new tyres and we'll have some challenges from them; the grip level is there but performance does fall away with graining. That said, Jerez is a very specific track in this regard. The speed came easy today and we didn't respond to the other cars going faster in the afternoon. We should go even better tomorrow."
"It's great to see the fruits of our labours take to the track for the first time," added James Allison. "Everything has looked positive so far. The feedback from Romain has been encouraging and on the engineering side there have been no particular dramas of note. Overall it was a promising first day for this car and we hope to continue in this vein for the next days of testing."
Busiest man today was Force India's Paul dii Resta, the Scot completing 89 laps on his way to posting the fourth fastest time of the day.
"A positive first day," said the Scot, "and we managed to cover lots of laps - so that's the most important thing. I felt very comfortable all day and we managed to get through the programme as we focussed on collecting aero data and understanding how well the car correlates with our simulation tools at the factory.
"We also started trying to learn as much about the tyres as possible so that we can carry that into tomorrow and optimise the set-up. The new compounds are quite different with the new construction and I've already felt a difference with the balance of the car in the low and high speed parts of the lap."
"As first days go, we are pretty satisfied with how things went today," admitted Chief Race Engineer, Jakob Andreasen. "From the install lap onwards we managed to keep to the programme, even with the disruptions for the red flags. In the morning we focused on aero data collection before moving to baseline set-up work just before lunch.
"For the afternoon Paul completed some longer runs as we started to get an understanding for the 2013 tyres, especially the medium compound, and how they perform. All the while we made good progress with our system checks and we are in good shape ahead of tomorrow."
Unveiled here yesterday, Daniel Ricciardo gave the STR8 its track debut this morning, driving out of the garage just a couple of minutes after the green light came on to indicate that the 2013 season was open for business.
After the usual installation laps, the team began tackling the day's programme which centred on checking all the car systems, without looking at performance. Inevitably however, the engineers could not resist looking at the aero numbers for the new car. The STR8 ran reliably, completing 70 laps.
"It's good to be back behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car," admitted Ricciardo. "It was a long day to complete 70 laps, however, the main thing is that the car was reliable, which is a positive aspect and we got through our work schedule for the day. You cannot look at car performance on the first day, when reliability and comfort are more important and, on that front, my seat and driving position were good. So this was a day of tasks that were relatively simple, but also important."
It was an uneventful day for Felipe Massa at Ferrari, pretty much like a Grand Prix Friday. The entire day was given over almost entirely to acquiring data relating to the behaviour of the new car, the Brazilian completing 64 laps.
"The first impression is definitely a positive one," said the Brazilian. "We did not run as much as I had expected, but that's normal when you are testing a new car. On a track like this where traction counts for a lot and the tyres feel it, I got a positive feeling as far as the balance of the car is concerned and I think that, especially at the rear, we are going in the right direction and it feels more solid.
"It's definitely a different situation to last year, because the basis for this year is in much better shape," he continued. "There is still a way to go before we understand the true behaviour of the car, but we are on the right road. There is still a great deal to do, as far as testing and development are concerned, but I am confident that this year, we will not lose time in understanding, as happened in 2012, what was the problem and how to solve it. Now we have a little more than a month to concentrate on the job, to be as well prepared as possible for the first race."
Making his Sauber debut, Nico Hulkenberg completed 79 laps without any noteworthy problems. First out on track, the German started the day doing some short runs and systems checks, followed by aerodynamic measurements.
"I had a positive first day, with no major problems on the reliability side," said Hulkenberg, "and the cooling particularly worked well, which is a relief for the engineers. The car behaved well on this track. For me it was the usual familiarisation with the car as it was my first day in my new environment. I'm quite happy how everything went."
"It was a successful first day of testing," said Head of Track Engineering, Tom McCullough, "with Nico getting used to the systems and the team, as well as familiarising himself with the 2013 tyres. We also signed off a number of aerodynamic items. Overall it was really a productive day."
It was a problematic day for Mercedes and Nico Rosberg. Going quickest almost out of the box, the German was soon the cause of the second red flag of the day, Button being the cause of the first.
The German completed three runs morning before an electrical problem caused the car to stop on track, unburned fuel in the exhausts subsequently ignited but did not cause any serious damage. Further investigation identified that the fault originated in a wiring loom and the necessary modifications are now taking place ready for tomorrow when Lewis Hamilton makes his debut with the team.
"At the start of winter testing, you often encounter small issues because the car you're running is a brand new design," said Rosberg. "We had an electrical problem this morning and, once we had found the root cause, chose to modify the parts to make sure it didn't happen again.
"Of course, at this time of year all you want to do is spend time in the car and get a feeling for how it's working, but these hiccups are just part of the game. During the laps I completed this morning, I had a good feeling with the car and it felt solid."
At Williams, Pastor Maldonado focussed on tyre testing and component checks, the Venezuelan completing 84 laps in the 2012 car.
We had no problems and the car felt very consistent," said Maldonado, "so we were able to learn a lot, which will be useful for the FW35 development. We planned to run the FW34 to enable us to have a reliable car to test the new tyres with and also try some different set-ups.
"It's great to finally be back on track after what felt like a long winter," he added, "I'm confident we can achieve a lot this week."
"Jerez is a unique circuit that we don't race on during the season," said Mike Coughlan, the Grove outfit's Technical Director, "and it provides the perfect opportunity to do some final test and development work ahead of the FW35 launch.
"Today was a good day for us with Pastor completing 84 laps in the FW34. We concentrated on running some new systems in preparation for the FW35, as well as some planned set-up changes. We would be reluctant to do these over a normal race weekend as you lose too much track time making the changes, so it was ideal for us to get these into our programme today. It was also interesting to see the new Pirelli tyres in action and having the FW34 here helped us to really understand how the tyres are working."
It's very early days, but Caterham (and Marussia) remain worryingly off the pace, Giedo van der Garde completing 64 laps and posting a best time over a second off Maldonado's best.
"It's great to be back at work and I'm pleased with how day one on track has gone," said the Dutchman. "We completed a very decent number of laps today without any major issues and I was pretty comfortable in the car straight away.
"Day one is all about making sure everything in the car works as it's supposed to and apart from a couple of minor issues with the floor we didn't really have to make any changes to the car straight out of the box. We also ran through a number of procedures that are new to me, particularly starts as we didn't do too many of those last year, but the main thing for me is the tyres. They definitely feel different to what I ran in the Friday sessions I did in 2012 and that's going to be a focus for us in the tests, to get as much as we can out of them.
"It's obviously far too early to make any judgements on the performance levels we can expect from the 2013 package," he continued, "but compared to the car I drove in Brazil it feels like we've made some good progress over the winter. Tomorrow will be more of the same for us - running through more procedures and a few setup options across the range of tyres we have available here and hopefully getting as many laps in as possible."
"I'm happy with what we have achieved today," said Team Principal, Cyril Abiteboul. "We began day one of the test by revealing the 2013 car with its new livery and I'm very pleased with the reaction we've had from around the world to the updated car. It's always a risk changing something people feel as passionately as they do about F1 car liveries but we've had some very good responses to it and seeing it out on track proves that we made the right decision.
"Performance-wise it's too early to tell where we're going to line up this season. We're realistic enough to know that it will take a big effort to fight the teams ahead, but we are patient and we've set ourselves achievable targets for the year ahead. One of the keys to helping us reach those goals will be maximum track time in the tests so we have to aim for another three days of clear running and see what we've learnt when we get back to the factory.
"All in all it's been a good day and another bonus for us is to see how well Charles and Giedo have slotted into the team. This bodes well for the year ahead and it's great to see our driver pairing fitting in so well in the very early stages of the season."
Unveiled, along with the Caterham, just a few hours earlier, the Marussia MR02, in the hands of Max Chilton, was the cause of the third red flag of the day when the Englishman span following a technical failure.
With a brand new driver in a brand new car, the main thrust of the morning's programme was acclimatisation. Marussia is running KERS for the very first time so there was a detailed focus on systems and procedures, as well as getting to grips with the range of Pirelli PZero tyres available for the test.
Chilton left the garage shortly after running got underway at 09.00 and steadily built his performance from there.
The team took time out over the lunch period to conduct routine checks with the KERS and other systems before Chilton took to the track again for his afternoon programme. It was shortly after he had embarked on this that an issue with the right rear suspension became apparent forcing him into a spin. The team decided to curtail its running as a precaution while further inspection is conducted with the specific component.
"This afternoon's problem aside, I'm really happy with the start we have made to our 2013 campaign," said Chilton. "With a new car there is always the potential for something to crop up and cut short the programme, but for the morning period everything went according to plan, which is just the start we needed. I'm sure the Team will get on top of the suspension issue very quickly so we can all pick up where we left off and start putting some more miles on what is obviously a very promising package."
"Up until the afternoon session we really couldn't have been happier with the way things were going for us with the car and Max," added John Booth. "It was a big day for him but he has been his characteristically mature and assured self, and as a consequence of that and a very seamless morning's running, we have every reason to feel encouraged by our big picture. In terms of the specific issue we encountered this afternoon, we will naturally ensure we conduct a thorough inspection of the component in question and see what solution we can bring to recommence our programme."
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