02/02/2015
NEWS STORY
Sebastian Vettel topped the timesheets once again at Jerez today, while a water leak signals that Mercedes still isn't entirely bullet proof.
Sterling work by the Lotus crew meant that, contrary to expectations, Lotus was able to get out on track for some serious lappery today.
However, when Pastor Maldonado brought out the red flags for the first, and only, time - leading to much wicked speculation on Twitter - following a "drivetrain related issue", it signalled another late night for the Enstone crew.
All was going well for Mercedes, Hamilton setting a good pace and continuing to amass the mileage, until around 13:50, when an innocent enough incident turned out to be something more.
"Lewis stopped just short of the marks in pit lane (by a few hundred metres...), car back in the garage for inspection," tweeted Mercedes. However, a subsequent tweet revealed: "Minor water system problem the reason for Lewis switching off in pit lane entry. Expecting to have him back out in a jiffy."
Two hours later, rivals who had winced as the German team looked set to add another 150 laps its tally breathed a sigh of relief when it revealed: "That'll be us for today - investigations revealed a water leak from a failed part. The crew are now working hard to get the car ready for a return to action tomorrow."
Hamilton's frustration however, was but nothing compared to Jenson Button as McLaren continues to suffer. The session was almost three hours old before the Briton made a dent on the timesheets, albeit 33s off the pace. Though he reappeared in the final stages of the session, as the rain began to fall, his lap count for the day equalled teammate Fernando Alonso's from yesterday, six!
With the last fifty minutes of the session hit by rain, rookies Max Verstappen and Felipe Nasr took the opportunity for some serious wet weather driving, the Dutch youngster, in particular, looking more than competent.
It was a day of pure frustration for Red Bull, the team side-lined following a minor off early in the session which saw Daniil Kvyat damage his front wing. Unfortunately the team didn't have a spare, and as a result the few remaining laps (9) that the Russian covered over the course of the day were without a front wing.
So, another strong day for Vettel and also Valtteri Bottas, interestingly the only drivers on duty both days.
The eight drivers in action today covered 465 laps, compared to the 450 completed yesterday by just seven.
"It's too soon to give a verdict on the true level of this car," said Vettel, who added another 89 trouble-free laps to his tally, "especially as we can't make a comparison with the other teams, who can be running different programmes. However, I'd say we have a good basis to work from. We did a lot of running, even in the rain, when we tried the new intermediate tyres, which worked well, getting up to temperature despite the cold: that's a definite step forward."
"The applause in the garage at the end of the session?" he added, referring to something which had the paddock wondering. "Well, everyone was happy we’d even managed to run in the wet with nothing bad happening. The boys have got enough to do in the garage as it is…"
"A bit like yesterday, in that even if we did a good number of laps, you can never claim to have done enough kilometres," said James Allison. "However, I agree with Sebastian on the fact that, for the moment, we have a good basis."
Sauber enjoyed another successful day, debutant Felipe Nasr completing 88 laps as he concentrated on becoming familiar with the car and its systems. During the entire day, the car ran absolutely trouble-free.
"It was a great day," said the Brazilian. "I was able to complete a lot of laps, and I was happy with everything I saw. I was getting used to the systems, the procedures and the characteristics of the car. It was definitely a good start to understand where we are now. It was important for me to get used to this new environment, but after such a long day, with both dry and wet conditions, I was able to adapt to all the situations. Now we can start working on the details."
"It was another positive day," added Giampaolo Dall'Ara, the Swiss team's Head of Track Engineering. "We were able to run through our programme again without any major issues. It was Felipe's first day in the car, which was also good for us to get to know each other and work together. In the morning we went through some systems checks, set-up work and some normal scans of various kinds. In the afternoon we evaluated different tyre compounds and power unit settings.
"The only unforeseen element of the day was the weather, because we only expected dry conditions. But we had no drama there, as we adapteded our programme, and Felipe drove in the wet at the end of the session, which gave us some extra information. We seem to have a good basis to work from."
"We have had another good day," said Valtteri Bottas, who completed 61 laps on his way to posting the third fastest time. "We managed to get through all of our programme and it was only the final run that we were compromised due to the rain. The morning was dedicated to obtaining aero data, then this afternoon we focused on the longer runs, making set-up changes and analysing the results. We are learning all the time and at the moment I am really pleased with what I have felt when in the car.
"We learnt a lot yesterday and have continued to build on that today," added Rod Nelson, Chief Test & Support Engineer. "We started aero performance based work today, continuing to move through the test schedule we have set ourselves. We have had no issues with the car today, so have made good progress."
As was the case yesterday, Mercedes was first out, Lewis Hamilton emerging for his first run at precisely 09:00. He subsequently completing 91 laps before lunch across a series of long runs however, further running was curtailed by investigations into the cause of a water leak.
"That was a satisfying day," said the world champion. "We did a lot of laps and I got a feel for the car quite quickly.
"We're in the first days of testing," he continued, "so it never feels that great as the car is at the worst it will be all season. But it feels the same as it did last year which is a good thing. A little more downforce maybe but otherwise it handles exactly the same. The balance obviously wasn't perfect as we're not working on setup yet, so it could be a lot better. But the priority right now is to put in the laps, not set fast times, and there were lots of positives today. We got good mileage and hopefully we'll get even more in the next two days.
"Testing isn't the exciting part as a driver," he admitted, "I live to go racing. But this is where you build your foundations for the year and we're all working hard to understand the car. Everything from drivability to tyres you have to learn now to stand you in good stead for the season. You can't get excited at this point as there's a long way to go before Melbourne but there's a really good energy in the team. Everybody is feeling positive and working hard but we're basing nothing on last year. We start again with the same aim as everyone else - to win. I can't wait to get to that first race.
At Toro Rosso, Max Verstappen made his official 2015 track debut at the wheel of the new STR10.
"In the morning we had some difficulties in warming up the brakes, but we fixed that very quickly," revealed the Dutch youngster. "After that, we managed to do some long runs that helped me to learn about the new car straight away.
"In the afternoon it rained a bit," he continued, "but it was useful for me to experience the intermediate tyres. It feels good to finally start working for the upcoming season and I'm happy with my first test day here in Jerez."
"Having learned some useful lessons yesterday, we had a much smoother day's running," said Chief Race Engineer, Phil Charles, "which meant Max was able to get into a rhythm. We discovered a lot and began to stretch our new car, working on improving its balance.
"We decided to change some parts around the middle of the day and that cost us some track time. In the afternoon, we made the most of the rain that came in the closing stages, running the new intermediate tyre, which has a different temperature operating range to the 2014 compound. All in all therefore, a positive day."
"Seeing the E23 Hybrid on track for the first time was very satisfying and we owe a great deal of thanks to everyone at Enstone and everyone here at the circuit for the long hours which have been put in recently," said Lotus Technical Director, Nick Chester. "We also say thank you to our partners and suppliers for assisting us with what has been a very ambitious build programme.
"We had predicted that we'd probably just be able to complete a couple of shakedown laps today," he continued, referring to comments he made yesterday following the car's late arrival in Spain, "but thanks to some fantastic work overnight we were able to run the car from this morning.
"The feedback from Pastor has been positive at what is a very early stage in the car's test programme. We had a drivetrain issue this afternoon, but didn't lose out on too much running as it started raining shortly afterwards. We can't wait to get back out on track tomorrow."
"It was fantastic to get behind the wheel for the first ever lap of this exciting new car," said Maldonado. "Even though it's early days we achieved a lot today. It was already exciting to feel the potential of the car and I can't wait to get back in the car tomorrow. We did stop running early, but then it started to rain so everyone else came in too so it was not a big drama. The car certainly looks fantastic and I know we have a lot of potential for the season ahead."
Today was another day of limited running for McLaren. Despite a concerted effort overnight to rectify the issues that had limited progress yesterday, the first run this morning once again brought a problem to the surface.
The Woking outfit's engineers duly attempted to fix matters throughout the morning, carrying out a number of installation runs, but were not able to arrive at a definitive cure. Before the lunch break, therefore, they elected to investigate the situation even more deeply, thereby uncovering a small ancillary issue that they believed to be the root cause of the trouble.
The fix took most of the afternoon to effect, resulting in Jenson Button running just a single additional lap at the end of the day, which ithe team believes proved to have cured the issue and is hopeful of beginning afresh tomorrow, without a recurrence.
"We expected this test to be tricky - and the next two days probably won't be plain sailing, either," said Button. "But people have short memories . Look at last winter - the first test of 2014 was very tough for everyone too.
"So there are no real worries at the moment. We're just hopeful we've solved our issue – the last run of the day seems to have sorted the problem out, so I hope tomorrow will be a little easier. It'd be nice to get some laps on the engine, and to begin to find out where we are in terms of engine driveability and car development.
"This is a very complicated power unit, but its packaging is unbelievable - very tight - and we haven't had any temperature issues. That's a massive positive for us, so well done to Honda for that. There's a very positive atmosphere about the place: the team isn't McLaren and Honda, it's McLaren-Honda. It's everyone together."
"Today was another tricky day," added Yasuhisa Arai, Honda R&D senior managing officer, "but we feel like we've overcome the main issue that affected our running during the first two days of the test.
"Despite our lack of mileage, it's been a important learning process for our engineers, who've really started to develop a close working relationship with everybody at McLaren - that's a big positive. For tomorrow, we're hopeful that we've moved on, and that we can get some more laps completed."
As a result of time pressure to ready the RB11 for the first test, no replacement (front wing) was available, revealed Red Bull following Kvyat's mishap, consequently the team was restricted to running systems checks until the late shower effectively ended meaningful running for the day.
"It was not ideal today," said the Russian, "sometimes mistakes happen and there's nothing you can do about them. After that we tried to maximise our day, not having spare parts to replace the wing. We still maximised our running with what we had and hopefully we can recover from that. I have another day to make up for it, so just looking forward to Wednesday now."
"As with everybody else the pressure to get the car ready on time for this test meant that we didn't have a replacement wing here," added Head of Race Engineering Guillaume Rocquelin. "However, there are plenty of routine checks that need to be done, systems checks that go on all the time in the background, so we could at least get through a lot of that work today, which is why we sent Dany out for some laps without recording a time. A replacement wing will arrive overnight and hopefully it'll be full speed ahead again tomorrow."
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