F1-drive

[SinglePic not found]Sebastien Buemi was the quickest driver halfway through the second day of testing at Jerez with a time of 1:20.504 in his Toro Rosso STR5. Jenson Button, in his third day getting acclimatised to the new McLaren MP4-25, had been second best with a time of 1:21.528, but he improved that to a 1:20.618 just before 1 pm.

Toro Rosso is trying out new parts it did not have available when the car made its debut in Valencia last week. The team is also working on understanding the hard and the medium compound Bridgestone dry weather tyres and comparing them to the soft and the super-soft tyres used in Valencia.

Unlike Wednesday when it rained virtually nonstop, the sun was out on Thursday. But it did take more than an hour for the track to dry in the morning.

[SinglePic not found]Michael Schumacher took over the Mercedes W01 from Nico Rosberg today, and Robert Kubica replaces Vitaly Petrov in the Renault R30. With the circuit being dry, Kubica and the team decided he should test rather than Petrov, who has been scheduled to drive later on.

The rest of the line-up stayed the same as it was on Wednesday: Nico Hulkenberg – Williams FW32; Fernando Alonso – Ferrari F10; Tonio Liuzzi Force – India VJM03; Mark Webber – Red Bull RB6; and Timo Glock – Virgin VR-01.

Hulkenberg caused the first red flag just 22 minutes into the session when a hydraulic leak made his Cosworth engine shut down and stranded him on the track on his fourth lap of the day. The Williams team reported that his programme for the morning was “carrying out aero and weight distribution tests and cooling runs,” but the car spent three hours in the garage being repaired.

The Williams crew got Hulkenberg back out on the track just before the midpoint of the session, and he immediately jumped from being the slowest driver of the day to setting the third quickest lap at 1:21.565.

The second red flag came out at 11:10 a.m. after Glock’s front wing came off and he ran over it. Virgin certainly did not need anything like that to happen. The team will now have to halt its testing schedule until a second shipment of parts arrives overnight.

“This morning we experienced a front wing mounting problem which caused the wing to come off the car at the beginning of a run,” said technical director Nick Wirth. “The cause has already been identified. Unfortunately, we’re missing one or two spare parts which will hopefully arrive this evening, so we won’t be able to run for the rest of the day.

“In the short amount of running that we’ve achieved so far, we are very encouraged by what we’ve seen and we have gathered some vital aero data which is very much in the range of what we were predicting. We look forward to resuming the programme tomorrow morning.”

[SinglePic not found]One of the reasons the track organisers scheduled the four day test to run through Saturday was so that they could draw in weekend spectators to watch Spanish hero Alonso drive the Ferrari. Ironically, the Ferrari team scheduled Alonso to test on Wednesday and Thursday, and Felipe Massa will drive Friday and Saturday.

Alonso’s programme for Thursday centres on long runs, pit stops, and stressing the tyres on heavy fuel loads to simulate race conditions this season. After eight laps there was a two second drop off in his lap times as the tyres lost their optimum grip. But he still did a 212 km run, which is equivalent to just over two-thirds of a grand prix distance, and set the fifth fastest time at 1:21.928.

After losing half a day’s running on Wednesday because of an oil leak on the Red Bull, Webber had racked up 60 laps halfway through Thursday’s session. He was back in eighth with a time of 1:23.164.

“It is early but I felt pretty confident in the car straight away,” Webber said. “You never, ever know where you are in terms of the competition. Obviously that is what we are here for, to race against other people. And that is what we will do in Bahrain. But up until then it will be very hard for people to know exactly what is happening. We are pretty happy with the rollout of the car, and we will learn a lot more this month. We will start to look at doing some lap times later in the month.”

[SinglePic not found]Like the rest of the drivers and teams, Kamui Kobayashi, who was ninth with a time of 1:23.190, is pleased the track is dry today. “With the new regulations, narrower front tyre and the big fuel tank, we need to learn many things, for myself, and for data for the team as well,” he said. “So if we can gain a lot of mileage it would be nice for us.”

Testing in the dry also meant that the teams did not have to deal with the problem they had in the rain on Wednesday when the Bridgestone intermediate wet weather tyre wore out very quickly. “Everybody had troubles with the intermediate,” Kobayashi explained. “We could do about 10 laps and then the tyres had no grip. They became like slick tyres. Maybe the narrower front tyre makes the difference. We don’t know.”

The ambient temperature halfway through the session was 14.8 degrees Centigrade, and the track temperature was 25.6 degrees Centigrade.

Lap Times February 11, 2010 (Midway through testing day)

1. Sebastien Buemi, Toro Rosso STR5, 1:20, 52
2. Jenson Button, McLaren MP4-25, 1:20.618, 29
3. Nico Hulkenberg, Williams FW32, 1:21.565, 18
4. Michael Schumacher, Mercedes W01, 1:21.907, 60
5. Fernando Alonso, Ferrari F10, 1:21.928, 79
6. Robert Kubica, Renault R30, 1:22.129, 43
7. Tonio Liuzzi, Force India VJM03, 1:23.004, 33
8. Mark Webber, Red Bull RB6, 1:23.164, 60
9. Kamui Kobayashi, Sauber C29, 1:23.190, 39
10. Timo Glock, Virgin VR-01, 1:29.964, 11

© ESPN EMEA Ltd.

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