Feb 20, 2011

Barcelona Testing Day 3 - Time for Rosberg!!

20/2/11,

The third day of testing of Formula 1 at the Circuit de Calalunya is completed with Nico Rosberg to have/ scored the fastest lap. Today the teams did not found the weather conditions they wanted with a wet track and light rain ready to test their tires. Although the rain stopped quickly however the low temperature and the humidity in the atmosphere did not allowed the track to dry quickly and almost the whole morning the efforts of the drivers were done with their cars wearing rainy and later intermediates tires. 



This was a good opportunity for the teams to test their compounds of Pirelli for wet with all the cars making several laps on the track this morning. The serious work started after the lunch break, as the track was dry so the drivers continued their program. In this process the best time of day was noted by Nico Rosberg with the car of Mercedes GP. The German did his best lap lap in the last half of the hour before the end of the day so he could control his car reaction with the intermediates tires .


"It was interesting running with the intermediates this morning and, although the warm-up is tricky, we definitely improved our understanding of the tyres,” said the German driver. “Our long runs this afternoon included some aero work in preparation for our next upgrade package before going into lower-fuel, new-tyre running at the end of the day. We made good progress in understanding the car and the tyres, and the reliability was solid once again."


In the second place was found Vitaly Petrov, who fought with Rosberg for the first position in the las minutes.We used the intermediates to begin with and it was one of our first opportunities to do a lot of laps with them,” commented Petrov. “The only issue we had was warming them up because it was very cold early on. The plan was to do a race distance in the morning and we managed quite a lot of long runs while the track was wet. Then, we put the slicks on just before lunch and started improving the set-up. We learned a lot of new things and I’m starting to understand the tyres more and how to get the most from this car.” The Russian driver of Renault did many laps in the morning but the afternoon he was very active .After completing some middle stints, in the end he did efforts of 2-3 laps, which were quite fast. In third place was Lewis Hamilton in his McLaren. The British still had problems with the reliability of the MP4-26 this morning but in the afternoon he managed to cover long distances and make fast times. 

Williams had also credibility problems. Pastor Maldonado scored the fourth best time period of the day, but he didn't do many laps, due to a problem with the heat of the FW33. At the opposite extreme in terms of reliability was the fifth ranked Mark Webber. The Australian did an impressive number of 139 laps, including completing a full race simulation this afternoon, without facing overheating problems which wracked yesterday Vettel. 
The usual ...fluid leak was faced by Lotus, with Jarno Trulli spending much of his time in the garage, completing only 48 laps and getting the sixth time. One place behind him in the ranking was found Sergio Perez, Adrian Sutil, and after Sebastien Buemi with Toro Rosso. The young Swiss drove only in the afternoon because in the morning the car was on the hands of Daniel Ricciardo. 

Felipe Massa went twice in the morning in the sand traps at the exits, causing the appearance of a red flag, but in both of his exits he didn't damage the F150 Italia and after a while he was in the track again. In the afternoon he was only focused on covering large distances, making a race simulation . His time was just the 10th in the ranking but the general belief is that Ferrari can move faster. 

Timo Glock with his Virgin was in 12th, with 97 laps done by the end of the day, in front of the two drives who shared the car of HRT and Ricciardo. In the morning, Narain Karthikeyan was behind the wheel, but in the afternoon he gave the car to Giorgio Mondini, the 31 years old Swiss a former champion in Formula Renault V6.

Sunday test times from Barcelona:
1. Nico Rosberg, Mercedes GP, 1:23.168, 92 laps
2. Vitaly Petrov, Renault, 1:23.463, 93
3. Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, 1:23.858, 93
4. Pastor Maldonado, Williams, 1:24.815, 60
5. Mark Webber, Red Bull, 1:24.995, 139
6. Jarno Trulli, Lotus, 1:25.454, 48
7. Sergio Perez, Sauber, 1:25.557, 115
8. Adrian Sutil, Force India, 1:25.720, 102
9. Sebastien Buemi, Toro Rosso, 1:26.155, 31
10. Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 1:26.508, 123
11. Timo Glock, Virgin, 1:26.598, 97
12. Giorgio Mondini, HRT, 1:28.178, 39
13. Daniel Ricciardo, Toro Rosso, 1:28.329, 42
14. Narain Karthikeyan, HRT, 1:30.722, 32




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