BAHRAIN FORMULA 1 TEST, Day Two Kevin Magnussen and McLaren Mercedes turned up the wick on day two of the second pre-season F1 test in Bahrain. The rookie Dane scorched to a time 1.535s faster than the others, with the aid of Pirelli’s Super Soft tyre, despite losing most of the morning with car issues. Unfortunately, we didn’t get too many laps done this morning, but it was good to get some laps done at the end of the day,” said Magnussen. The team is doing a great job to help me: they’re giving me really good guidance and making me feel confident. There’s a lot of discussion about laptimes, and it feels good to get some good times recorded, but winter testing is just that – testing. It isn’t about times. We’re still learning a lot about the car,” he added. “We have four more days of testing next week and there’s still a lot of work to do. I’m sure everything up and down the pitlane will change a lot between now and Australia. His time was just a shade more than 2.5s slower than last year’s pole time, but with rivals such as Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes admitting they they’re running their unit at around 80 percent to maintain reliability while they learn the new cars. Yesterday’s pacesetter Nico Hulkenberg was quickest throughout the morning, and ended the day second for Force India. Third place went to Fernando Alonso and Ferrari, once again the team staying out of the limelight and getting on with a hefty job list. Alonso completed 97 laps – fewer than only the Williams of Valtteri Bottas who chalked up 116 laps. “My two days in the car have been very positive,” said Hulkenberg. “We’ve made some improvements to the car, collected lots of data, and continued to learn with each lap. At the moment it’s still early days, but I’m pleased with the progress we have made in terms of understanding the car. I think we are getting closer to seeing the potential of these cars, certainly compared with the performance in Jerez, but it’s such a steep learning curve and I expect the times to become quicker and quicker.” The Germans hands over to new team mate Sergio Perez for the final two days of the tests At the end of the day, Alonso told Autosport that he still had a way to go to learn the F1AT. “We understand it better,” he said. “Definitely every day its a huge step in understanding the car, understanding the systems. We dont yet know everything in the car properly and all the things we have available. There are many things to discover and to get on top of and exploit in terms of performance as well. I think its a big challenge for all the teams to be ready.” Ferrari, like all the teams has compiled as much data as possible, but here is nothing like actually running a car on the track. Im happy with how the team is doing. We did a good job during the winter. I think now we are in good shape in terms of the amount of laps. I felt more comfortable straight away here in Bahrain and thanks to the simulator work everything is coming out automatically so hopefully we can concentrate on the performance, especially in the next test, which is the crucial one. As has been the case so far throughout testing this year, eyes and camera lenses were focused further down the pitlane on Red Bull Racing and Sebastian Vettel – and the seemed to be an air of relief as he completed 59 laps for seventh quickest time. Definitely a better day today, he smiled. We did more laps, so thats encouraging. Its good to check the car, check the reliability, but obviously there is a lot still to do. It was good to get a proper first feel for the car and it feels OK but theres a lot more to come. Its difficult to talk about catching up [to rivals] because I dont know what other people are doing, but we did more laps than we have done so far and thats the big thing. Were learning every single lap, even if the quality of the lap is sometimes not the best. However, the most important thing is to run and we did that. The last two days have been very useful. I hope Daniel (Ricciardo) can get some more good laps in tomorrow. BAHRAIN TESTING TIMES – DAY TWO Pos, Driver, Constructor, Time, Laps 1. Kevin Magnussen, McLaren, 1:34.910, 46 2. Nico Hulkenberg, Force India, 1:36.445, 59 3. Fernando Alonso, Ferrari, 1:36.516, 97 4. Nico Rosberg, Mercedes AMG, 1:36.965, 85 5. Valtteri Bottas, Williams, 1:37.328, 116 6. Kamui Kobayashi, Caterham, 1:39.855, 66 7. Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull, 1:40.340, 59 8. Jean-Eric Vergne, Toro Rosso, 1:40.609, 58 9. Esteban Gutierrez, Sauber, 1:40.717, 55 10. Romain Grosjean, Lotus, 1:41.670, 18 11. Max Chilton, Marussia, 1:42.511, 17
Posted on: Thu, 20 Feb 2014 17:26:36 +0000
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