09/02/2012
NEWS STORY
Nico Rosberg continues Mercedes domination of the timesheets at Jerez on penultimate day of testing, but Romain Grosjean and Sebastian Vettel are quickest 2012 runners.
Driving the 2011 car, Rosberg completed a programme aimed at furthering the team's understanding of the 2012 Pirelli tyres, similar to Schumacher yesterday. He completed 118 laps which also allowed the team to put more mileage on 2012 development items on the car.
This was the final day for the German outfit at Jerez, its 2012 contender, the F1 W03, currently scheduled to make its test debut on 21 February at Barcelona.
"I'm happy with the testing that we have achieved here in Jerez," said Rosberg, "we learned a lot about the Pirelli tyres and a few other things for the new car. It seems that the tyres are closer performance-wise this year, with the rear tyres also looking a bit stronger. Pirelli have done a good job so far. You can't really compare the lap times with other teams, but it was interesting to learn a lot with our 2011 car. Now I'm really looking forward to the two Barcelona tests with our new Silver Arrow."
"We have had a productive and busy three days in Jerez this week running the MGP W02 car for the final time," added Ross Brawn. "Simultaneously the final preparations have been taking place back at the factory for the first test with our 2012 car in Barcelona. Michael and Nico have been able to complete some valuable mileage this week, and enhanced our understanding of the new season's Pirelli tyres which will prove very useful once the new car in is on track."
2011 GP2 Series champion Romain Grosjean made his debut in the Lotus E20, the young Frenchman completing 117 laps on his way to posting a 1:18.419, 0.806s shy of Rosberg's pace but 0.878s quicker than the next quickest man in a 2012 car, reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel.
As he focussed on system checks, temperature monitoring, data correlation and evaluation of the performance of the car with its initial aerodynamic package, on his final lap the Frenchman deliberately ran out of fuel in order to test fuel pickup.
"I am one of the happiest guys in the world right now," he said. "It's been a really good day for me. We were fastest in the morning then we completed some longer runs in the afternoon. It's great to finally drive the car which I have seen coming together and being built at Enstone. Working so well with all the mechanics and the engineers made it such a memorable first day in the E20. The car feels good on different fuel loads and tyre compounds we used. For sure there's margin for improvement in the tests ahead, but it's a great start to the year."
"Another strong day with 117 laps and over 500 km completed," added Alan Perman. "We ran a similar programme to the one we ran during the previous two days with Kimi. This gives us good data across a range of scenarios and valid comparisons between our drivers. Track conditions were better today, with more rubber down and less wind than yesterday. We conducted set-up work on the medium compound tyre in the morning. Some of these were set-ups we ran with Kimi, others were new. In the afternoon we focused on getting as many laps completed as possible to test the reliability of the E20, which proved to be faultless."
After 96 laps, Vettel, enjoying his first experience of the car with which he hopes to win a third successive title, admitted it was a pleasure to get behind the wheel of an F1 car again after the winter break.
"It's been two months since we were in the car, so it does take a couple of laps to get back in the rhythm," said the German, "but the car feels fine and as we expected. There's quite a loss of grip due to the regulation changes, but you get used to it quickly and then start to explore how the new car feels. So far we can be happy, we had a couple of issues, but it's normal when the car is new."
"Sebastian's first day in the car went almost perfectly," added Ian Morgan, the Austrian outfit's head of race engineering. "It was very cold this morning and hard to get temperature into the tyres. That meant that the first couple of hours weren't too productive, but later on the conditions were great with less wind than yesterday, so we managed to get through almost everything we wanted, including two long runs, which went well. We would have done a third, but there were a couple of red flags at the end of the session so we missed a few laps. But we can't complain, as it's gone well.
"Tomorrow's programme will be more of the same," he continued. "We're on course to tick off all the things we wanted to get done and we hope we can complete the list tomorrow."
Lewis Hamilton was in action for McLaren, the Englishman completing 80 laps on his way to posting the fourth best time of the day. As with teammate Jenson Button, the first day was about acclimatising Hamilton to the new car, finding a workable set-up direction and ironing out a few minor issues following his initial feedback.
"Today felt pretty good considering it was my first time in the new car," said Hamilton. "My initial feelings are pretty positive, despite going through a long, tough programme of initial tests - there were no nasty surprises, which is pleasing.
"This year's car feels a bit different from last year's: in 2011, we had so much stability from the rear-end, particularly in the high-speed corners - but we're now having to find that grip elsewhere, or, at least, take grip off the front and somehow offload it at the rear.
"This car's baseline is something we can really work with. I know the men and women back at the factory will take a lot from this test and translate it into something new and even better for the next test. The car feels reasonably quick - and that's a nice feeling."
Referring to the news that his management company has recruited Didier Coton to look after him, Hamilton added: "Bringing Didier Coton onboard is one of the steps I've taking to keep myself 100 per cent focused on my main goal of winning the world championship. Didier's got a huge amount of racing experience and will really strengthen my management team - he's been a good friend of mine for many years, and has great experience with the team and the Formula 1 paddock. He'll be there when I need him."
Though Jules Bianchi only completed 2 laps - 1.5 according to his team - there were effectively three French drivers on track today, Jean-Eric Vergne being the second quickest of the trio.
For Toro Rosso, the initial priority was getting Vergne settled in the car for the first time, after which the Faenza team worked through an extensive aero test programme, meaning lots of short runs aimed at collecting data for different aero configurations.
It got through the programme, while at the same time Vergne gradually got up to speed with the car. The conditions on track were much better for aero work today as there was much less wind. A relatively long run was completed in the afternoon and the plan is to do an even longer one tomorrow.
"My first feeling when I got in the cockpit was a positive one," said Vergne. "The car seems to have a good base from which we can progress over the winter tests. In general, it was a positive day for me and the team and I am happy with the work we got through. I still need to work on my seating position in the car to make it perfect and I'm looking forward to making more progress tomorrow. Was it a special feeling knowing this is "my" Formula 1 car for the season? I preferred to concentrate on the work side of things and put the extraordinary aspects of the job to the back of my mind."
Sergio Perez completed his second day of testing with the C31. After a good start, with the Mexican posting some good times on a (then) cold track and with medium compound tyres fitted, just before lunch it became clear that the gearbox oil filter needed changing, a time consuming procedure. Mileage was therefore limited but nevertheless, the team remains positive.
"It was a difficult day for us," said the Mexican, "but the important thing is that we are improving. Every step we took went in the right direction. Kamui has another day of testing here tomorrow. Obviously he will have an intense programme and I hope we can finish the Jerez test with a productive day."
"We started the day with some set-up work in the morning, when we tested different ride heights and dampers," added Giampaolo Dall'Ara. "The car responded very well to the changes. It all looked promising. The fact that we later lost significant track time is a shame but on the other hand our achievements so far are very positive."
Having missed out on the opportunity to run the F2012 at last week's unveiling, today was Fernando Alonso's first chance to get behind the wheel of Ferrari's 2012 contender. The Spaniard continued with the task of gathering data on the behaviour of the new car, however, a hydraulic problem halfway through the morning cost him ninety minutes of track time.
At Williams, Bruno Senna was making his debut, the Brazilian youngster completing the most laps today (125) on his way to posting a best time only marginally slower than his teammate.
"It was a great day today," said Senna. "Although there is a lot of work to do outside the car as well as in it, it was very satisfying to finally get behind the wheel. We have had a very productive day and managed to cover all of the things we needed to. We found some interesting things out about the tyres in particular.
"I feel that there is a lot of potential in the FW34 and also in myself driving the car," he continued. "The team has done a great job and I'm happy we have had a trouble-free day. I'm now looking forward to continuing our test programme tomorrow to learn more about the car.
"I am very pleased with both Bruno's first day in the car and the team's performance today," added chief operations engineer, Mark Gillan. "We managed to finish the whole test programme without any issues, completing 125 laps in total. Bruno's feedback has been very precise and we now look forward to continuing to understand and optimise the car set-up during the final day of testing here in Jerez tomorrow.
With Jarno Trulli due to drive the Caterham for the first time tomorrow, today it was the turn of newly recruited test driver Giedo van der Garde to try the green and yellow machine. The Dutch youngster, who had a minor off towards the end of the session, completed 74 laps.
"That was a good day," he said, at the end of the day's programme. "I'm happy because I put in a lot of time in the car and that was the first time I've been on track since Monza last year, so I had to spend a bit of time this morning getting back into the groove, but that came pretty quickly and then we got down to work. I'm very pleased because by the end of the day I was getting starting to get used to all the new things about F1 - there's a lot to learn but I know what I need to focus on so next time I'm in the car I'll definitely be able to get on the pace more quickly.
"There are a couple of real areas that I know I can work on - the first being the brakes. I'm used to a stiffer pedal on the GP2 car so I had to adapt my style a bit to get used to the F1 car, but that came quite early. The other area is getting the most out of the new tyres. The quickest lap time is pretty much straight out of the box and that means being on it as soon as you leave the pits. We used both DRS and KERS today and I felt pretty comfortable with both. DRS started to come naturally by the end of the day and with KERS there's more to come. Jarno will be working on maximising that tomorrow so I think the team will have more for me to work through on that system next time I'm in the car.
"Basically I enjoyed myself today. The team has been great with me - the engineers and the mechanics have all been working really hard to help me acclimatise, so thanks to them for today and now I'm looking forward to my next run."
"Another useful day of testing," added Mike Gascoyne, "this time with Giedo in the car for his first runs with us. The plan today was to acclimatise Giedo in the car this morning and then start running through more systems tests and KERS evaluation and he did a very solid job for us, making sure we could get through the whole program. Reliability was again good for us today and tomorrow we will give Jarno his first taste of KERS, run through tyre evaluations and start exploring more of the car's performance potential."
Talking of 'offs', there was a slightly bigger one early in the day for Jules Bianchi, just moments into his second run. The mechanics worked hard to repair the right rear corner of the car, but ultimately the team was missing one small brake component, which prevented the car from returning to the track. The replacement part is expected to arrive this evening to allow Nico Hulkenberg to get his first run in the car tomorrow morning.
"I made a small mistake on my second run," said the Frenchman. "The tyres were a bit cold and I spun into the gravel and touched the wall with the right rear wheel. It was not a very big impact, but it caused some damage. I'm very sorry because my mistake has cost the team a lot of time and effort. Going away from here I want to focus on the positives because we had a very good day yesterday and I've really enjoyed working with the team this week."
"A bit frustrating to lose some track time today," admitted technical director, Andrew Green, "but we will take it on the chin because we had two very productive days earlier in the week with plenty of mileage. The damage to the car was not that significant, but a lack of spares at this time of year meant we could not go back out in the afternoon. The car will be ready for tomorrow morning when Nico gets his test programme underway. We will resume the aero work we started this morning and make the most of the tyres that we saved from today's limited running."
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