The opening day of this week’s five day test at Jerez saw Sebastian Vettel and the Red Bull RB5 lead the field in some style. The young Germans time of 1:19.055s was easily the fastest of the day as the teams went about their work, with Felipe Massa in the Ferrari F60 next, some 1.3 seconds down on Vettel.
A number of teams, Ferrari, BMW and Mclaren included, focused on tyre evaluation as the sport heads into a new era of slicks, and this should explain the relative lack of pace from these teams with Robert Kubica lining up only fifth in the BMW f1.09 and the McLaren M P4-24 of Pedro de la Rosa faster only than the Renault R29 of Nelson Piquet, the latter confessing to a few reliability problems with the car.
Kamui Kobayashi ran well to third in the Toyota TF109, and the interest of the day came in the shape of the track debut of the new Force India VJM02, the first Mercedes customer car to run. Giancarlo Fisichella took the car around in a promising 1:21.584, and professed himself happy with the first run of the new machine.
Testing continues at Jerez for the next four days, with only one more test to come before the Australian Grand Prix at the end of the month. Only the STR team and the resurrected Honda outfit were not present.
Written: Mon, 02 Mar 2009 09:31:11
[ Print View ][ E-Mail Article ]
- March 13, 2010Alonso ahead in final practice
- March 12, 2010First blood to Rosberg
- March 11, 2010Longer circuit disappoints drivers
- March 10, 2010Vettel and Webber 'get on well'
- February 10, 2010New Red Bull RB6
- February 08, 2010Webber to debut RB6
- November 04, 2009F1 news briefs: Wednesday
- November 01, 2009Vettel wins Abu Dhabi
- October 31, 2009Brits on top in P3
- October 30, 2009McLaren on form in Abu Dhabi
- (March 02, 2009)View all headlines from this date
