Lotus and Sauber catch the eye at mid-season testing

David Bodapati May 3, 2012

414 3 minutes read

Mugello, 2 May 2012: While McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull have already won in 2012 it was their nearest challengers who topped the timesheets on day two. Romain Grosjean Kamui Kobayashi both posted times of 1:21.603 on a day where fine weather replaced Tuesday’s thunderstorms many of the teams maximised their time on track.

Grosjean set his time during the morning,with Kobayashi joining him as the day drew to a close. “It’s always good to end the day on top, but we have to remember that in testing lap times mean very little,” said Grosjean, who was awarded first place on the timing screens by virtue of having set his time earlier. “This test gives us an opportunity to try things that we wouldn’t have time to do during a race weekend, so hopefully it’ll help us to keep pushing forward.”

Behind them came Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber who were sharing the running for Red Bull. Vettel’s best time in the afternoon was two-tenths off the pace set by Grosjean and Kobayashi, and a tenth ahead of his team-. Between them they managed 118 laps. “We had absolutely truck loads of stuff to go through, but so far so good,” said Webber. “Mileage is so limited these days it was good to be in the car again; this test has been very useful.”

Fifth quickest was Felipe Massa for Ferrari. Massa spent much of his day doing half-speed aero runs with a now-familiar sensor top hat fitted to his role hoop. He still managed to breakthrough the 100-lap mark when his team switched to a study of tyre behaviour later in the day.

Jean-Eric Vernge completed his test for Toro Rosso before handing over to Daniel Ricciardo in the afternoon. Vergne was testing different diffusers in the morning, while for Ricciardo the job was back-to-backing different exhaust packages. “This was the best day’s testing I have done,” said Vergne after his shift. “We had no problems, we got through a lot of items on the job sheet and, as a first impression, the new elements we tested seem to work well. Daniel still has more things to try tomorrow and if we can put all the best elements of this test together, then I am hopeful it could represent a step forward in Barcelona.”

Michael Schumacher in eighth place put in more miles than anyone else with 144 laps. “Unlike yesterday, we were able to gather really a lot of data, and like this we are learning more and more about our car which is absolutely positive,” said Schumacher. Ninth was Charles Pic for Marussia, who completed 46 laps and then handed over to Timo Glock. Glock, however spent much of his afternoon in the garage with his steering rack being replaced.

Vitaly Petrov put in 112 laps for tenth place as Caterham tried out various components of its Barcelona upgrade package. “We completed everything we targeted in today’s runplan,” said Petrov. “This afternoon we started running some new parts and even though it’s too early to make any judgements on what sort of step forward they give us, I can say the new rear wing we tried immediately felt like it was giving us more downforce.”

Gary Paffett continued for McLaren and managed to complete 59 laps before a gearbox issue halted his progress in the afternoon. Paul di Resta’s day was more severely curtailed, the Scot managing just fourteen laps after a hydraulic problem caused Force India to spend most of the day in the garage.

“It’s never nice to spend so much time sitting in the garage, but we had a few reliability concerns that we needed to resolve before we continued running,” explained chief engineer Jakob Andreasen. “We suspected the issue was related to the hydraulic system of the car so changed that as a precaution. At the same time we chose to make the most of the downtime by bringing forward the engine change, which had been planned for the end of the session. It has been a tough day for the guys in the garage, but they did a great job to get the car out for the final half hour and give Paul the chance to complete a handful of laps in preparation for tomorrow.”

Last on the time sheet but with a solid 100 laps in the bag was Bruno Senna for Williams. Following the pattern laid down in the winter the team concentrated on aero and mechanical work and seemed in no particular hurry to set quick times. “We gained a lot of information from our runs and have some good knowledge to carry forward into tomorrow,” said Senna. “We aim to continue improving and to be competitive on the final day. Mugello is an awesome track. It’s really fast and physically challenging.”

Duration of test	Three days (May 1-3)

Unofficial testing times

Pos	Driver	Constructor	Time	Laps
1	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	1m21.035	66
2	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing	1m21.267	106
3	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1m21.363	98
4	Daniel Ricciardo	Scuderia Toro Rosso	1m21.604	117
5	Sergio Perez	Sauber	1m22.229	118
6	Nico Hulkenberg	Sahara Force India	1m22.325	55
7	Pastor Maldonado	Williams	1m22.497	63
8	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes AMG	1m22.579	129
9	Oliver Turvey	Vodafone McLaren Mercedes	1m22.662	99
10	Paul di Resta	Sahara Force India	1m23.002	34
11	Heikki Kovalainen	Caterham	1m23.169	139
12	Timo Glock	Marussia	1m23.466	110