F1 Test 2013 Jerez – Day 2 Summary, Grosjean and Lotus top the time sheets

Image Courtesy Lotus F1 Team

The F1 Teams were hard at work again at Jerez today with some serious mileage covered. Mark Webber put 101 laps on the new Red Bull Racing RB9 totalling some 278 miles in the Spanish sun, more than any other driver and he ended the day 4th fastest. Lewis Hamilton had his first serious drive behind the wheel of the Mercedes F1W04 but unfortunately it didn’t last too long with the car suffering a problem with the hydraulic brake line connecting to the right rear caliper. The failure caused Hamilton to go off track and hit a tyre barrier causing damage to the front left suspension and associated aero parts but happily a bang to his legs no injuries to the driver. The Mercedes Team was unable to carry out the investigation and repairs to the car in time for Lewis to rejoin the session and as a consequence he was only able to complete a total of 15 laps as the accident happened at just before 10.00 am CET. That brings Mercedes total lap tally to just 29 after Rosberg’s problems yesterday and has taken a significant chunk out of their development time for the week, but perhaps more significantly out of the time they have available to get to get the measure of the new Pirelli P Zero tyres.

The man at the top of the time sheets for most of the day was Romain Grosjean in the Lotus E21. Grosjean ended the day comfortably fastest with a lap time of 1m 18.218s undercutting Jenson Button’s best time in the McLaren MP428 from day 1 by 0.643s and clear of today’s second fastest driver Paul Di Resta in the Force India VJM06 by 0.785s. In all today an impressive 856 laps and 2,355 miles were covered by the 12 drivers running in the session. Grosjean’s fastest lap equates to 203.8 kph.

In total 1,513 laps have been completed over the 2 days so far with over 4,100 miles covered, amazing how fast it builds up at F1 speeds over a few days.

Tomorrow and Friday will see Kimi Raikkonen taking over the driving for Lotus and Nico Rosberg first in the car for Mercedes. Triple world champion Sebastian Vettel will take over from Mark Webber for the next 2 days in the Red Bull RB9.

Times for today’s session are shown below:

Driver		Team	Pos	Time (sec)	Diff	Tot Diff	Laps	Miles
Romain	Grosjean	Lotus F1 Team	1	78.218	–		95	261.345
Paul	Di-Resta	Sahara Force India F1 Team	2	79.003	0.785	0.785	95	261.345
Daniel	Ricciardo	Scuderia Toro Rosso	3	79.134	0.131	0.916	83	228.333
Mark	Webber	Infiniti Red Bull Racing	4	79.338	0.204	1.120	101	277.851
Nico	Hulkenberg	Sauber F1 Team	5	79.502	0.164	1.284	99	272.349
Lewis	Hamilton	Mercedes AMG F1 Team	6	79.519	0.017	1.301	15	41.265
Sergio	Perez	Vodafone McLaren Mercedes	7	79.572	0.053	1.354	81	222.831
Felipe	Massa	Scuderia Ferrari	8	79.914	0.342	1.696	78	214.578
Pastor	Maldonado	Williams F1 Team	9	80.693	0.779	2.475	71	195.321
James	Rossiter	Sahara Force India F1 Team	10	81.273	0.580	3.055	19	52.269
Giedo	Van Der Garde	Caterham F1 Team	11	81.311	0.038	3.093	88	242.088
Luiz	Razia	Marussia F1 Team	12	83.537	2.226	5.319	31	85.281

Red Bull Racing F1 Team launches RB9

Red Bull Racing today unveiled the sixth new F1 car to be see this week, the eagerly awaited RB9. The car was unveiled at the team’s Milton Keynes base in front of an audience comprising team members, partners, international media and competition winners but atypically for this season so far no live viewing on the web for fans at large. This was a strange and no doubt unpopular decision by Red Bull a team that prides itself on marketing and the involvement of its supporters.

Anyway on to the event and the car was unveiled by longstanding driver pairing Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber. The RB9 was resplendent in a purplish blue hue and still featured a stepped nose. Technical Director Adrian Newey described the new car as an evolutionary design in line with other launches this week and again cited the stability of the regulations as the key factor in this decision. The RB9 was described as the final instalment in a generation of designs that has so far delivered 34 Grand Prix wins and six World Championships.

Newey said that the team had been extremely busy and paid tribuute to the team’s hard work over the winter following an intense championship battle in 2012 in which they had to focus on both the development of last years car while also doing research on the upcoming RB9. This issue is certain to resurface in 2013 with a much bigger impact given the sweeping changes in the regulations for 2014.

Again in line with comments from other teams, Newey quoted the new Pirelli tyres as the most significant change since last year and said that although the teams were given some visibility of the new rubber in practice for the Brazilian Grand Prix weather conditions at the time meant that they didn’t learn a lot. He went on to say that Pirelli has supplied data about how the new tyres behave but that past experience dictates that it’s only when testing begins that the team will really find out.

Tonight sees the team depart for Jerez and the first F1 test session of the new season where Mark Webber will give the RB9 its first track outing on Tuesday 5th and Wednesday 6th of February with Sebastian Vettel taking over on Thursday 7th and Friday 8th.