31/01/2014
NEWS STORY
Felipe Massa topped the timesheets on the final day of the opening pre-season test, as Mercedes powered teams continue to dominate.
In the two-and-half-weeks before the cars next take to the test track, some teams can afford to award themselves a well-deserved slap on the back whilst others look set to be burning the midnight oil.
On a day that saw the previous mileage almost doubled, Nico Rosberg completed a full race distance while Fernando Alonso and Kevin Magnussen both completed over 100 laps.
Overnight rain which continued until late into the morning meant that wets were the order of the day as proceedings got underway, the teams finally switching to Inters around lunch time before the dry tyres emerged in the afternoon. That said, it remained damp throughout the day. Only one driver ran with the soft compound when conditions improved, Juncadella in the Force India, the rest opting for hards and mediums.
Williams continued with the programme it has run over the previous days, focussing on new component, systems and reliability checks. Massa completing 86 trouble-free laps on his way to posting a best time of 1:28.229.
"It wasn't a great day because it was raining," said the Brazilian, "but we completed some laps in the wet conditions which was interesting to understand how the car behaves in wet, with the tyres and new power unit.
"We managed to do many more laps today than we have in the last three days which is important," he continued. "Today we didn't have any issues with the car which I think is also another step forward. We now need to concentrate and prepare with an aim to do more laps per day in Bahrain.
"Overall, I'm happy with my first days with Williams and I'm pleased with what I have seen in the team this week. For sure it is important to be competitive, but testing is testing, and we now need to look to prepare for Bahrain and then towards the first race, which is the most important thing.
"It was a good day for us," added Rod Nelson, the Grove team's Chief Test & Support Engineer. "It was what we were hoping for earlier in the week but it was good to start getting more mileage in the end. We still would have liked to have done more laps but there were several red flags today which interrupted running so to hit 86 laps is still a good result.
"We are very happy with the performance and reliability of the car up to now. We still have a lot of work to do when we get to Bahrain and in the time leading up to then but overall, we are pleased with how we have ended the week here."
Second quickest was Massa's former teammate, Fernando Alonso, the Spaniard completing 115 laps, thereby bringing the Maranello outfit's total to 252 laps this week, equivalent to 693 miles.
Given the weather, the first part of the day centred on evaluating the wet tyres and on further work on management of the various procedures that are used on the new car. In the afternoon, the team was able to make some set-up adjustments to the F14 T.
"A busy and very demanding day," said Alonso, "during which we were able to do a good number of laps, which is the real aim of this first test. It's difficult to get a clear picture of the behaviour of the wet tyres because the track conditions were in between damp and dry, which is maybe the worst situation for understanding how the Intermediates perform.
"The afternoon went well and we tried various aerodynamic and mechanical configurations, gathering a lot of data that will prove useful to continue the development work of the car."
Another Spaniard finished third, Daniel Juncadella making his debut with Force India, one week after being confirmed as Test and Reserve driver. The youngster completed 81 laps on his way to posting a best time 1.228s slower than Massa, though it was on the soft compound.
"It was my first day working with the team and it was a big challenge because of the tricky conditions," he admitted. "I took things very cautiously because I had never driven a Formula One car in the wet and for the whole day the track still had damp patches. It was a case of building up my confidence and learning how the team operates. It was a great experience and I made sure to make the most of it.
"We covered a lot of laps, which was a big improvement after quite a frustrating day yesterday. It's what the team needed before the Bahrain test to really start understanding the car. I want to thank the team for today and I look forward to the rest of the season."
"The final day in Jerez has proved to be the most productive so far," added Otmar Szafnauer, the Silverstone-based outfit's Chief Operating Officer. "Despite the mixed weather conditions, Daniel was able to cover 81 laps, which has given him valuable experience for his role as a reserve driver this season. The car has run reliably all day, which is a result of all the hard work carried out earlier in the week to resolve some of the initial reliability concerns.
"During these early days it's paramount to get laps under our belt and over the last four days we have clocked up almost 650 km. It's not been an easy test operationally, with lots of different challenges, but the whole team has done an extremely professional job to ensure we maximised the test days we had available."
Yesterday's pace-setter Kevin Magnussen was back on the pace again today, though his session ended abruptly when he crashed around ten minutes before the close of play.
In the morning the Woking team capitalised on the conditions, electing to run a wet-weather programme that gave the Dane the opportunity to gain experience on both the Intermediate and full wet tyres. It also supplied the engineers with data about the behaviour of the power unit in the wet.
While the morning rain abated, the cooler conditions meant that the track never fully dried, rendering lap times slower than in previous days. Nonetheless, Magnussen racked up an extremely impressive 110 laps, giving both himself and the team further insight into the behaviour of the power unit and chassis across a range of dynamic conditions.
His day came to a slightly premature end however, getting the car onto a wet kerb, losing traction and oversteering into the wall. However, with the incident occurring just ten minutes before the end of the day's running, and with MP4-29 sustaining only relatively minor damage, the impact to the day's programme was minimal.
Mercedes had Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg on duty. While the German was meant to have the car to himself, having completed a race distance in the morning, and Hamilton losing track time following his wing failure on Tuesday, it was decided to let the Briton back in the car for the afternoon.
The German team completed good mileage with both drivers, making use of both the intermediate and dry tyres during the day. Rosberg's best time of 1:36.951 saw him end the day in eighth, while Hamilton's 1:30.822 was good enough for fifth.
"It's come as a bit of a surprise that we were able to do so many laps here today and throughout the whole week," said Rosberg. "I was able to do a full race simulation on only the fourth day of winter testing, so we can be very happy about that.
"We decided that I should stop driving at lunch time and hand over to Lewis as I had collected a lot more mileage than him at the time, which is a normal team decision.
"The past few days and weeks have been a great team effort; both factories in Brackley and Brixworth and also our fluid partner Petronas have been a great working group. It's been a decent start, but there is still a lot of work ahead of us in the next six weeks because it's such a big mission to get reliability with these new cars. Performance-wise we don't know where we are because you can't really compare to the other cars, but that's not the focus right now. We've learned a lot this week so it's an encouraging start to the year."
"I was a little bit down on mileage this week, so it was good to get some more time in the car this afternoon as every little helps at this stage," admitted Hamilton. "It's been a fantastic week for the team. We've put a lot of laps on the car which is a huge accomplishment.
"It's a bit early to say this definitely, but right now the car feels pretty good," he continued. "Like every year we've got a lot of work to do; it's a new challenge this season and the workload is maybe a bit higher than in previous years, but it's a new experience for everyone and I'm enjoying it.
"This week has just been about getting the mileage on the car and we've managed to do that quite successfully, which is really encouraging as reliability is the biggest positive we could hope to take away from here. So far so good; now we just have to continue working hard and see what happens in Bahrain.
"Today's programme was designed around completing race simulation work," added Paddy Lowe. "In damp conditions this morning, Nico conducted a baseline run before running a 74-lap race simulation on intermediate tyres, including two pit-stops. This was completed faultlessly before we stopped for lunch. At that point, in view of the large discrepancy between our drivers' mileage this week, we decided to put Lewis in the car for the afternoon.
"Conditions were very tricky on a damp track, spitting with rain and in cold temperatures. That meant we struggled to find grip on the intermediate tyres and the slicks. Nevertheless, he completed 41 laps to bring our total for the day to 132 laps. At the end, he successfully completed some race starts.
"Overall, it was a very solid day which brought a very successful week to a close. My thanks go to the entire team at Brackley, Brixworth and Petronas for bringing us to this point. It feels like we have hit the ground running, although we still have many aspects of both the car and the Power Unit to improve before the next track test in Bahrain."
All in all it was a successful debut for the Marussia MR03 which only hit the track in the final hour of yesterday's session. Max Chilton having debuted the MR03, today it was Jules Bianchi's turn to gain experience of the new car.
The conditions didn't hamper the team's early programme, which was to explore some of the car's systems, particularly the interface between the brake-by-wire and the powertrain. That completed, the focus shifted towards putting laps together and achieving further crucial mileage to begin the process of reliability testing.
The day was brought to an early conclusion by a red flag for Magnussen, which prevented Bianchi from consolidating the work from the day. Nevertheless, the team completed 25 laps in total.
"I was really excited to get my first taste of the new MR03 and I like it a lot!" said Bianchi. "The car feels great to drive and I'm pleased that I was able to achieve some good mileage. You always want more, of course, but there is a lot to work through and understand, so we have to be patient and go through the programme in the right way, especially as we have had damp conditions to contend with also. At the end, once we were happy with the systems work, it was nice to put the slicks on and start putting some laps together. It is early days but we were quite happy with the pace in the conditions and for our programme. Not a bad start."
"It has been a very busy 48 hours for our team since the MR03 arrived in Jerez," admitted Chief Engineer, Dave Greenwood. "We have had to squeeze rather a lot into that space of time in order to achieve our objectives for its debut test and to ensure we gathered plenty of information to work with.
"All in all, given the challenges we have faced, I think we have to be pretty pleased with the early signs from the new package and the positive response from our drivers. We have spent a lot of time understanding our systems, so it has taken a little while to build up a head of steam, but by the end of today we were starting to make some good progress. We now head back to the factory where we will spend a lot of time poring over the data we have collected in order to ensure we are well prepared for the next two tests in Bahrain."
Following yesterday's crash, today Adrian Sutil completed 69 laps at the wheel of the C33, as Sauber brought its total mileage over the four days to 163 laps. The Swiss team has gained valuable experience with the vastly different systems that are being introduced this year and all the data will be analysed in the factory over the next two weeks in order to be well prepared for Bahrain.
"The track conditions today were tricky," said Sutil, "in addition to having low grip and low downforce. I'm quite happy that the brake-by-wire system worked today. We still have to get to know it better, but we have a lot of data that we can analyse and learn from.
"This test was more like a roll-out for us," he continued, "so the spec was very different to what we are going to have on the car ultimately. This test was a big task for the driver as well as the team. We completed quite a few laps here, which is particularly important for the power unit. We didn't have too many problems, but it is still a lot of work to do, as the cars are still quite young. In Bahrain I think we can start to work on the performance of the car. The temperature will be closer to race conditions, and we will have a different package on the car. I'm looking forward to that."
"Today it was raining on and off, with the track not really drying," said Giampaolo Dall'Ara, the Hinwil outfit's Head of Track Engineering. "However, that didn't affect our programme. Compared to yesterday and the day before, we can see that the car has improved. During the past four days we were able to complete a total of 163 laps.
"Our main target was to focus on the reliability of the C33. We wanted to get to know all the new systems and get as much mileage as possible. With all the data we gathered we will be busy over the next two weeks. For the next two tests in Bahrain we will bring a major aerodynamic package. This will allow us to also focus on performance, as well as the reliability of the C33."
Despite the weather and the comparative lack of running, one of the happiest men at the circuit today, perhaps one of the happiest men in Europe, was Kamui Kobayashi, back where he wants to be, back where he belongs. The popular Japanese driver completed 54 laps on his way to posting a best time of 1:43.193, which still made him the quickest of the Renault powered runners.
"First I want to say thank you to the whole team for making me feel so at home so quickly," he said. "My first day in the car may have ended earlier than we'd planned after another problem with the Renault engine, but, from where we've been earlier this week, it's very good to have completed 54 laps. For me, it was also good to be back in an F1 car and to be working with a team that I'm already feeling very happy with.
"In the morning we started on a very damp track so we were on full wets until about 1030 when we went onto inters as the track was starting to dry. We were working through a number of different engine maps and were definitely making progress but just after lunch we had another engine problem which meant we had to stop.
"We were going to try some longer runs in the afternoon, and I'm sure we'd have made more progress, but now we'll go back to the factory to work through all the information from this test and aim to build on our better last day here when we get to Bahrain."
"Despite having to finish our Friday a couple of hours before the end of the session, this was still a much better day for us," insisted Cedrik Staudohar, Track Support Leader with Renault Sport F1. "We were able to work through a busy program with Kamui, looking at different engine maps and torque settings and, until the issue that stopped us running, it was clear that we made some progress on reliability."
"I'm pleased for the whole team that we managed to finish the test with a more decent number of laps today," added Cyril Abiteboul, "but there is still clearly a lot of work to do to prepare for the next test. Obviously a lot of the focus is on Renault, and it is imperative that they make significant progress on all areas of engine performance and reliability, but we are in partnership with them and we will work as closely as we always have to help them find solutions and deliver the package we know they can on track.
"For our team, it's been a tough but interesting week and I'm proud of how hard everyone on track in Spain and back at base in Leafield has been working. We've given Marcus, Kamui and Robin track time, albeit limited in Marcus and Robin's cases, and I'm pleased to see how well all three are fitting into the team.
"Now we have just over two weeks to prepare for the Bahrain tests and everyone is ready for the work that lies ahead. Our 60% scale wind-tunnel program at TMG in Cologne also started on Tuesday, the first day on track in Spain, and that's a big plus for us as we look to develop CT05 now and throughout the season to come."
It was another difficult day for the Red Bull family, though Daniil Kvyat finally managed to get a couple of laps in the Toro Rosso. The Russian managed eight laps before a system problem put an end to his running. Once that was fixed he managed one more lap in the afternoon.
"The team has had a difficult time over the past four days," it admitted in its end of play press release, "even if this was always a possibility given the rule changes. However, the engineers and our partners now have two weeks to study the situation and be much better prepared for the next four days of testing in Bahrain."
"As a rookie with so much to learn, this week in Jerez has not been the start I would have wanted," admitted Kvyat. "However, I trust my team and I trust Renault, so with some hard work, I am sure we can be in better shape and start to catch up at the next test. There have been a few positives, because we have acquired some useful data, even with limited running. Some questions have therefore already been answered and I was able to get a feel for the car in wet conditions."
Needless to say it was another disastrous day for Red Bull, the world champions throwing in the towel and heading back to its UK base shortly after lunch, Daniel Ricciardo having completed just 7 laps.
"It's been a very difficult test," said Christian Horner. "We have had numerous Renault issues as well as chassis cooling issues, which have affected our progress. However, despite the lack of mileage, what we have managed to learn shows that the problems should be solvable for the next test in Bahrain. Part of the purpose of this early test was to learn about any issues ahead of the start of the season and there will now be a lot of focus on the dyno over the next few weeks."
"We did seven laps and every time Daniel went out we made improvements to the control of the engine," added Race Engineering Co-ordinator, Andy Damerum. "We were also making fixes to the issues that have arisen from our side and we have made progress there. However, we then discovered a mechanical issue with the car and after investigation it became clear we would not be able to fix this in time to run in the afternoon, so the decision was taken to retire early, take the data we have amassed and work towards the next test in Bahrain.
"Two weeks is a long time in Formula One and we and I'm sure Renault will work flat out now to solve the problems we've been having," he added.
Chris Balfe
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