Lap times started to come down in the second day of pre-season testing in Valencia. Felipe Massa set the pace again in his Ferrari, while Sauber continued to show well, this time with Kamui Kobayashi behind the wheel. Here’s what the team’s had to say heading into the third and final day at the Spanish circuit.
Ferrari
Second day of testing for Scuderia Ferrari, alongside six other teams at the Cheste circuit, near Valencia.
Felipe Massa continued with development work on the new car, concentrating mainly on finding the best set up under various conditions of how the car was used and on analysing tyre behaviour. The Brazilian driver covered a total of 124 laps, the quickest in a time of 1.11.722.
The Scuderia continues testing at this circuit, when Fernando Alonso will make his official debut at the wheel of a Ferrari Formula 1 car.
Sauber
On the second test day of the 2010 Formula One season, Kamui Kobayashi debuted at the wheel of the BMW Sauber C29 Ferrari. Once again the Valencia circuit in Cheste provided very good test conditions.
Kamui Kobayashi : “It was definitely a good day. We had no problems with the car and covered a lot of mileage. The car felt good. I enjoyed driving a lot and also working with the team. It was a difficult winter for everyone but they seem to have done a good job; I want to thank them for that. Now it is important to keep working hard for the remaining test opportunities.”
Willy Rampf (Technical Director) : “It was another positive day of testing for us. First of all Kamui familiarised himself with the car and the track. We then continued with some basic set-up work and ran the car on different fuel levels. The latter is very important for us in order to be able to compare the results from the track with our results from track simulation. As yesterday, the car was reliable, which enabled us to complete our programme as scheduled.”
Tomorrow, Wednesday, will be the third and final day of testing in Valencia. Pedro de la Rosa will be taking over driving duties again.
McLaren
Second day of testing for the MP4-25. Lewis Hamilton returned to the cockpit for the first time since the end of the 2009 season, completing 108 laps of the Ricardo Tormo circuit during a very busy and productive day of testing.
The team continued with the programme started by Gary Paffett yesterday, focusing on car set-up and understanding the difference in balance caused by the heavier fuel-loads and narrower 2010-spec front tyres.
Lewis declared himself happy with the car’s performance and reliability.
For the third and final day of this week’s test, world champion Jenson Button will take the wheel – his first drive at McLaren Mercedes.
Renault
Robert Kubica: “After checking the systems on the car yesterday, we spent today trying to understand the car a bit more, especially to see how the balance reacted to some set-up changes. It’s quite different to what I have been used to, so it was important to get a good feel for how the car behaves. We did one very long run, which went pretty well, and there have been no problems, which is a good sign for our reliability.”
Alan Permane, Chief Race Engineer: “Another good day. We did a lot of laps: 119 in total, so we’re pleased with our reliability. The changes we made overnight have cured some of the understeer and Robert seems much happier and is feeling more comfortable with the car now. The track conditions were reasonably good and the Bridgestone tyres are particularly well suited to the circuit and are easy to test with.”
For tomorrow, Vitaly Petrov will take over the cockpit of the R30 for his first day of work with the team.
Mercedes GP
Nico Rosberg was back at the wheel of the MGP W01 car today for his first full day of testing for the Mercedes team. Another fine and dry day in Valencia provided ideal winter testing conditions and enabled the team to successfully work through today’s programme.
After completing the initial set-up work with the MGP W01 yesterday morning, Nico had a productive day focusing on long runs which saw him cover a race distance mileage over the course of the day. Although still not entirely comfortable with his position in the car, Nico completed 119 laps today, setting a fastest lap time of 1:12.899.
Michael Schumacher will take over from Nico tomorrow for the third and final day of this week’s test.
Nico Rosberg: "I’m very pleased with our first full day of testing and we were really able to get into the programme and achieve some good work today. We successfully completed a race distance on the car’s second day of running and I’m quite happy with how the car felt on the longer runs with heavy fuel. It felt like the same car, just a little bit slower, but the balance was good. We’ve still got some work to do on my position in the car as I dropped down by 1.5cm during the day which explains why the visibility got a little difficult towards the end but that’s something we can fix before the next test. Overall it’s been a positive start to our pre-season testing and I’m enjoying working with the team and feeling very comfortable here."
Williams
No information from Williams F1 today.
Toro Rosso
A better day today for the new car. Overnight, the team managed to locate and fix the gearbox actuator problem that meant the car spent much of yesterday in the garage.
Therefore today, Sebastien Buemi completed a good number of laps and the team worked through the normal programme for a new car: carrying out basic evaluations of the car systems and brakes, as well as starting to get an understanding of the two new Bridgestone compounds that are available here in Valencia.
Sebastien Buemi: “The car felt good today and I’m happy to have completed many more laps compared to yesterday. We still had some minor issues, but we were able to fix these. By the end of the day we have collected a lot of data to analyse, which will help us to get a better understanding of the new car. A comparison with the old car is difficult because of the different fuel loads and tyres that apply this year. All in all, it was a good day and we will see what we can learn tomorrow.”
For tomorrow’s final day of this test, Jaime Alguersuari takes over from Sebastien Buemi.