As the F1 winter testing season reaches its conclusion, Red Bull Racing chose Saturday in Barcelona to reveal the aero package it will take to the early season flyaways. Other teams were doing the same up and down the pitlane as everyone made final preparations for the trips to Australia, Malaysia, China and Bahrain.
There’s a saying that a lie can travel around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. Yesterday’s internet gossip was that Ferrari had unceremoniously dumped Felipe Massa. Quite where that one came is a mystery and it certainly didn’t get any traction in the paddock but there it was, circling the globe on Twitter while truth grumpily put the kettle on and buttered its toast. To the surprise only of people who believe Elvis is living on the moon, Felipe duly appeared in the Ferrari this morning. Usually that would be the story but Red Bull’s decision to finally show off its full race trim eclipsed it.
It was Mark Webber's turn to have first go in the upgraded RB8. Jenson Button had the McLaren, Paul di Resta was back for Force India and Sergio Pérez was driving at Sauber. After being out of the car for what seems like an eternity, Kimi Räikkönen was back for Lotus, Bruno Senna had a full day for Williams, Nico Rosberg was at Mercedes, Heikki Kovalainen had another day for Caterham and Daniel Ricciardo slipped into the seat vacated by Jean-Eric Vergne at Toro Rosso. And, of course, Massa, fresh from his vacation in Narnia returned for Ferrari, though Sebastian Vettel did pop down to the Scuderia for a chat with Fernando Alonso – probably just to wind everybody up. Don’t believe that focussed finger-pointing stuff, Vettel is a scamp.
Top of the tree today was Sergio Pérez in the Sauber. Pérez set his time in the now-familiar optimal pre-lunch sweet spot, and his advantage soon looked secure when light rain began to fall in the afternoon. The Sauber has looked reasonably fast since testing began and, with another 114 laps for Pérez today, it seems that its early reliability grumbles were nothing more than that. “I am very happy with how my final test day went,” said Perez. “We did an intensive programme with qualifying and race preparation, which was important to do. I think we have demonstrated that the car has developed well over the testing period. The team has made the most out of all the information we have collected and certainly is in good shape. Also, personally I feel ready for Melbourne.”
Just nine-thousands of a second behind Pérez was Button in the McLaren, though it was a bad day for Woking when technical problems limited Button to just 44 laps. McLaren also had some new parts on the car and didn’t get as much running with them as they would have wanted. “When you get new parts, you want to go out and put lots of laps on it in order to compare it to what you had previously – but we weren’t able to do that today. We had a hydraulics issue in the morning, which meant we didn’t do much running,” said a rueful Button.” It wasn’t the easiest morning – and then we didn’t do much running in the afternoon either because of the rain. We put a couple of good laps in but didn’t get any set-up work done. It was nice to drive the new package, and I have a good feeling about it, but I need to work with it for a bit longer to find the right balance for it. Hopefully, Lewis will put some more laps on the car tomorrow.”
Scuderia Torro Rosso
Rather more happy will be Daniel Ricciardo whose 131 laps and third place on the time sheets have come at a very welcome time for Toro Rosso who haven’t been doing the sort of mileage they would like. That may have influenced the decision to plough on with a race simulation as the rain began to fall, though Ricciardo didn’t really need an excuse. “A good day with my highest number of kilometres of the season, which is perfect preparation for Melbourne,” said Daniel. “I enjoyed the race simulation and we treated it like a real race when the rain came, with my engineer asking me on the radio to make the call about when to come in for tyres and which ones to fit. So it was good to have to make decisions and also to experience Pirelli’s intermediates and rain tyres.”
Red Bull Racing
Of course, the STR7 wasn’t the Red Bull most people were interested in on Day Three in Barcelona. Webber’s RB8 was a new chassis, the latest completed at Milton Keynes, and Mark gave it a very low key launch with 70 laps. His over-riding opinion was that not much had changed – though anyone believing anything said at a test is ultimately on shaky ground. “We had a pretty good run today and once again we learned a lot, however, I suppose the thing that everyone’s obviously asking about is the changes we made to the car but I have to say the car was not massively different to the one I drove on Thursday,” explained Mark. “We went through our normal programme, nothing drastic happened, and we just keep working away. It would have been nice to have a few more laps today but then again we didn’t have a race simulation planned, so the rain didn’t really hurt us. For me, the next stop now is Melbourne and I’m looking forward to that, it’s always good to drive out of the pitlane there. Racing’s what we’re all here for and, while testing is good, it’s nice to be on track all at the same time, all with the same window of opportunity to deliver – that’s what we love doing. I’m looking forward to that weekend unfolding, and the rest of the races. It’ll be good to get the season going.”
The other star of the day was the returning Kimi Räikkönen, though the Finn’s experiences in the Lotus were not entirely positive. Yesterday the only car to break into the 1m22s was the Lotus; today it was the only car not in the 1m22s, with Kimi languishing at the bottom of the order, three seconds off the pace and with the fewest completed laps of anyone. The 2007 Champion didn’t do much running in the morning as the Lotus crew worked on configuring a steering setup to Kimi’s liking, and he didn’t get much done in the afternoon because of the rain. “We had an issue with the power steering in the morning then we didn't run in the wet, so it was quite a short time for me in the car today,” explained Räikkönen. “At least we got some runs. The car was reliable when on track meaning we gained some good data for the team. Hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow and we can complete more laps."
Elsewhere, the still-employed Felipe Massa had a long day with 122 laps for Ferrari and was fourth quickest, narrowly ahead of di Resta in the Force India. Bruno Senna managed 111 for Williams next up, ahead of Heikki Kovalainen. The Caterham has a major update this week and it seems to have lifted itself up into midfield contention. Nico Rosberg had a big day for Mercedes going through set after set after set of soft tyres – though worrying for the Silver Arrows last year’s extreme degredation problems don’t seem to have gone away just yet. And they only have one more day to get it right.
1 Pérez Sauber 1m22.094s114
2 ButtonMcLaren 1m22.103s +0.00944
3 RicciardoToro Rosso1m22.155s +0.061131
4 MassaFerrari 1m22.413s +0.319122
5 Di RestaForce India1m22.446s +0.352108
6 SennaWilliams 1m22.480s +0.386111
7 KovalainenCaterham1m22.630s +0.53664
8 WebberRed Bull 1m22.662s +0.56870
9 RosbergMercedes1m22.932s +0.838129
10 RaikkonenLotus 1m25.379s +3.28543
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