RacingWire – F1 teams are prepping for the beginning of the 2010 World Champinship at the Cicruit de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain. Included below are excerpts from the teams' day three reports.
TIMES (All timings are unofficial)
Pos Driver Car Time Laps
1. Nico Rosberg Mercedes GP Petronas 1:20.686 128
2. Sebastien Buemi Toro Rosso 1:21.413 106
3. Jenson Button Vodafone McLaren Mercedes 1:21.450 105
4. Rubens Barrichello Williams 1:21.975 101
5. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1:22.344 115
6. Vitaly Petrov Renault 1:22.523 68
7. Adrian Sutil Force India 1:22.606 61
8. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull 1:23.123 51
9. Jarno Trulli Lotus 1:25.059 102
10. Kamui Kobayashi BMW Sauber 1:26.216 105
11. Timo Glock Virgin Racing 1:26.305 31
Mercedes GP Petronas
Nico Rosberg completed the third day of testing for the Mercedes GP Petronas team at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona today to bring his pre-season testing programme to its conclusion.
Rosberg spent the morning working on qualifying simulations and developing the car set-up before completing a race simulation exercise in the afternoon. Despite intermittent rain showers in the late morning and early afternoon, Nico was able to complete almost 600kms over 128 laps as he set the fastest time of the day, a 1:20.686, during the driest period this morning.
Michael Schumacher will take over the MGP W01 tomorrow for the fourth and final day of the test.
Nico Rosberg: "We had a good day today and made some significant progress in terms of set-up which was nice to see. We hadn't got the most out of the car in terms of performance over the last couple of days, but we made a step in the right direction today. We went through some big changes this morning step by step and found some good improvements. The longer runs this afternoon were interesting. We learnt a lot as there were other cars running similar programmes at the same time so we were able to do some comparisons. There is still plenty of room to improve but overall we're looking in pretty good shape."
AT&T Williams
Sam Michael, Technical Director: Today we had some interruptions caused by rain, but we still managed to achieve just over one hundred laps working on race runs and set-up with Rubens. We're now focussing our attention on some more set-up work for the final day of winter testing.
Rubens Barrichello: We covered 101 laps today, which is always good. Unfortunately, we had some rain during the day which affected the programme a little bit. Everything that the team has brought to this test seems to be working well, so it’s been a positive day altogether.
Scuderia Toro Rosso
Driver: Sebastien Buemi
Chassis: STR5 - 02
Best time: 1:21.413, 106 laps
“Today’s programme was supposed to be a repeat of yesterday’s – pit stop practice in the morning, followed by a race simulation in the afternoon - with Sebastien taking over from Jaime, ” explained Chief Engineer, Laurent Mekies. “However, the morning rain slightly altered the plans, although we were able to complete the race simulation, as there were only two periods of light drizzle in the afternoon.”
“Despite the rain, my first day in Barcelona has gone well,” commented Sebastien Buemi at the end of the session. “Carrying out a race simulation was very useful and it was particularly interesting to see how the tyre behaviour changed depending on the fuel load. In the races, it will be important to drive smoothly, as on full tanks it is very easy to damage the tyres if you slide too much. Today was good and so we can try and improve a bit more tomorrow, our last chance before Bahrain.”
“With just one more day of pre-season testing remaining, It is very encouraging that we have successfully completed two race simulations on two consecutive days,” said Technical Director, Giorgio Ascanelli.
