Jerez, Day 2: Schumacher fastest on Day 2 at Jerez

Day 2 / PM Session – February 8th 2012; Circuito de Jerez

In stark contrast to yesterday’s pace, it was seven times Formula 1 World Champion Michael Schumacher who finished Day 2 at the top of the timesheets. In his 2011 Mercedes F1 W02, Schumacher completed a huge 132 laps, posting a fastest lap of 1:18.561 earlier in the morning on a three lap stint.

Mark Webber in the Red Bull Racing, although finishing the day second on the timesheet compared to Michael Schumacher, finished top of the 2012 cars today with an impressive 1:19.184 over only 97 laps. The Red Bull RB8 looked very comfortable on track too, seamlessly gliding through the corners as Mark Webber pushed the car a little higher. Like Schumacher, Webber’s fastest lap came as a result of the morning session.

With the exception of a few changes, the timesheet remained relatively unchanged at the end of Winter Practice Day 2 in Jerez, as teams focused on longer afternoon track stints with heavier fuel loads and carious car settings.

Daniel Ricciardo showed good pace throughout the day in his Toro Rosso STR7, ending in third position overall without any fault hindrance from the car today. He was followed by rookie driver Jules Bianchi, third driver for Sahara Force India, who, in his first winter test outing in a Formula 1 car, managed P4 with only 46 laps; the fewest laps posted of any driver today.

Having taken a trip across the gravel trap in the morning and having to have work done on his Lotus E20, Kimi Raikkonen could only manage fifth position for the day, though still managed to get 117 laps in even with the car undergoing work for the best part of an hour in the morning. The Finn asked the team to replace the steering rack on the car after finding he did not like the setup of yesterday’s rack.

Back in the car for the afternoon session, Scottish driver Paul di Resta put his VJM05 into 6th position, getting ahead of the Ferrari of Felipe Massa and the McLaren of Jenson Button, who both exchanged places on the final timesheet compared with this morning.

Sergio Perez, in his first day in the new Sauber C31, has a faultless afternoon, pulling the Sauber into ninth position overall with a time consistent with that set by team-mate Kamui Kobayashi in yesterday’s first test session. The team did not have any fuelling issues either today.

Pastor Maldonado had a considerably better day with his Williams FW34 compared to yesterday – the team opted to test the cars reliability over 97 laps throughout the day, finishing the day with a best lap time of 1:21.197 in tenth place; over two and a half seconds off the pace set by Michael Schumacher earlier in the day.

Heikki Kovalainen and Caterham F1 Team had, what is safe to say, an ‘epic’ day of testing, completing a massive 139 laps – over twice the distance of a full Formula 1 race. Using the day to it’s fullest, the team were looking to get the feel of how the new [to their car] KERS system would react, as well as running the DRS system. At the end of the day, Chief Technical Officer Mike Gascoyne told the media “An excellent day of testing and I want to congratulate Heikki and the whole team for the job we have done today. We ran KERS for the first time and completed everything we had planned with that system, so thank you to Red Bull Technology and Renault Sport F1 for helping make that part of the program run so smoothly.”

Heikki was also happy with the session, stating “I feel very happy with the work we have completed today. Yesterday we had a problem that was nothing to do with the car so today was our first real day of testing and we had a trouble free day, completing most of what we wanted to on day one and day two and working through a variety of setup changes”.

Caterham finished the day in P10; newly confirmed, and rookie driver, Giedo van der Garde will get his first run in a winter testing Formula 1 session when he takes over from Kovalainen tomorrow in the CT01 for the entire day.

Once again, and unsurprisingly, Pedro de la Rosa in the 2011 HRT F1 car brought up the rear of the group. Although at times it seemed as though HRT were constantly on the track, the team finished with just 64 laps completed, three and a half seconds off the pace.

HRT will now return to their factory in Spain, and will not take place in Thursday or Friday’s test session in Jerez.

The first winter test session in Jerez is officially now halfway though, and tomorrow will be the last day that Mercedes will run a car.

Day 3 starts tomorrow at 09:00 CET. All timings from Day 2 can be found below.

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