Maldonado quickest for Lotus on first day of second test

Lotus’s Pastor Maldonado took advantage of a late soft tyre run to top an incident-filled first day of testing at Barcelona on Thursday.

The Venezuelan, who stopped twice with sensor issues in the morning, clocked a lap of 1m 25.011s in the E23 Hybrid with just under an hour of the session remaining to eclipse long-time pacesetter Kimi Raikkonen. The Finn ended up just 0.156s back on what was another encouraging day for Ferrari, with the 2007 world champion completing 70 trouble-free laps in the SF15-T.

Interestingly, both Maldonado and Raikkonen lapped faster than Lewis Hamilton’s 2014 pole position time at the same track for Mercedes.  

Daniel Ricciardo had a couple of minor offs on his way to third fastest for Red Bull, just ahead of Sergio Perez in the year old Force India VJM07. The Mexican hadn’t expected to be behind the wheel until Friday, but at the lunch break Pascal Wehrlein, who’d been driving for the Silverstone-based team, was recalled by parent squad Mercedes to replace an unwell Lewis Hamilton. The world champion managed just 11 laps in the morning before deciding to end his day early. 

Felipe Nasr gave more encouragement to Sauber by topping the morning timesheet, but in the afternoon the Brazilian rookie was involved in an unusual tangle with Williams’ Susie Wolff which left both drivers in the gravel and in need of repairs. Nasr eventually finished in fifth, Wolff in tenth. 

Max Verstappen led the lap count, completing 94 for Toro Rosso on his way to the sixth best time of the day, but McLaren’s Jenson Button had a considerably less productive time for McLaren. The Englishman recorded an encouraging lap of 1m 28.182s in the morning before being sidelined for the rest of the session by a faulty seal on the MGU-K part of his Honda power unit.

Wehrlein ended with near identical lap times for both Force India and Mercedes, with Hamilton in the unusual position of rounding out the timesheet. 

Testing continues at Barcelona on Friday.


Unofficial Thursday testing times from Barcelona:
1. Pastor Maldonado, Lotus, 1m 25.011s, 69 laps
2. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, 1m 25.167s, 74 laps
3. Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull, 1m 25.547s, 59 laps
4. Sergio Perez, Force India, 1m 26.636s, 34 laps
5. Felipe Nasr, Sauber, 1m 27.307s, 79 laps
6. Max Verstappen, Toro Rosso, 1m 27.900s, 94 laps
7. Jenson Button, McLaren, 1m 28.182s, 21 laps
8. Pascal Wehrlein, Force India, 1m 28.329s, 32 laps
9. Pascal Wehrlein, Mercedes, 1m 28.489s, 48 laps
10. Susie Wolff, Williams, 1m 28.906s, 86 laps
11. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, 1m 30.429s, 11 laps

Testing topics: the key questions heading to Barcelona

After an intriguing opening session at Jerez which saw a host of new cars take to the track for the first time, this week sees the teams decamp to a different part of Spain for the second pre-season test of the year. Ahead of four more days of running, we investigate several key questions that should be answered as the action ramps up in Barcelona… 

1. Can we believe Ferrari’s pace?
A few months, as the old adage goes, can be a lifetime in Formula One racing. But even so, Ferrari’s turnaround from a winter of discontent to shining at Jerez came as something of a surprise.

Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel set the fastest two times and topped three of the four days of running in the opening Spanish session, with the duo also offering glowing early appraisals of the new SF15-T.

So is the Prancing Horse galloping once more? As positive as Jerez was, a truer test will arrive this week at Barcelona - where the track and climate are more representative, and where Ferrari’s rivals will begin to ramp up their own preparations. These four days at the Catalan circuit could offer crucial clues as to just how high Ferrari can set their sights in 2015.

2. Will Mercedes and Williams show their hand?
While neither team troubled the top of the timesheets at Jerez, there were ominous signs that Mercedes and Williams - the two form teams at the tail-end of last year - are once again in good shape.

The Silver Arrows in particular looked impressive in the opening test. Concerned with mileage rather than performance, the team racked up an imposing 516 laps over four days - more than 100 better than any of their rivals managed. With that tally under their belt, many expect the team to start exploring outright pace in the second test - in much the same manner as they did in 2014, when they sprang to the top of the timesheets to finish an emphatic 1.6s clear of the opposition. Will they put down another marker in Barcelona - or have the rest of the field managed to make inroads into Mercedes’ advantage?

Williams occupy a similar position. Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas were seventh and eighth on the aggregate timesheet at Jerez as Williams kept a low profile. The car looked nimble out on track however, and the drivers remarked on the ‘step forward’ the FW37 represents. Barcelona will go some way to revealing just how big that step is…

3. Crunch time for McLaren and Honda?
While Jerez was far from disastrous for McLaren and Honda, the first public outing of the MP4-30 was frequently interrupted and ultimately limited to just 79 laps.

Even so, McLaren said they had still been able to meet their prime objectives, while Honda said further upgrades would be made before the second test. But where such issues could be tolerated at Jerez, Barcelona will be far more of an acid test. With just eight days of running before the season opener in Australia, there is a very clear sense that McLaren and Honda must get some serious mileage under their belt if they are to hit the ground running in Melbourne. 

4. Are Red Bull playing catch up again?
It wasn’t quite déjà vu for Red Bull in Jerez, but there were definite shades of 2014 as a sequence of Renault power unit issues set back the team’s progress - a situation not helped when Daniil Kvyat had to spend almost the entirety of the second day running without a front wing after an early driver error.

Both parties can overcome the slow start - indeed they fought back remarkably, and from a situation far more severe, last year. But Jerez did add a degree of pressure for the remaining two tests at Barcelona. Encounter more problems, and both Red Bull and Renault could be playing catch up once more.

For their part, Renault have said the issues they encountered have been understood and fixed. But make no mistake: a lack of unhindered running in Barcelona will be a clear setback for a team looking to regain their championship crown.

5. Will Sauber continue to impress?
After a dismal 2014 campaign that yielded not a single point, Sauber caught the eye at the first test in Jerez with some headline grabbing times. However, heading to Barcelona the jury’s still out on the relative merits of the new C34, not least because the Swiss team set their best times on soft tyres when many others (excluding Ferrari) stuck to harder rubber. 

There seems no doubt that Sauber have benefitted from a much-need step forward by Ferrari on the power unit front, and the new car certainly looks considerably more consistent than the C33, which looked wildly unpredictable at times. But is there more to come from the package? We should get that answer at Barcelona where the C34’s aerodynamics - a relative weak point on the C33 -will be given a much sterner test than in Jerez. 

6. How much will Force India benefit by running their ’14 car?
Ever since Force India’s glamorous team launch in Mexico City in January, fans have been clamouring for a glimpse of the freshly-liveried VJM08, but the new car has yet to see the light of day – and it won’t be running in Barcelona. 

Instead, the Silverstone-based squad have opted to attend the second Spanish session with last year’s car, with the hope that the new machine will finally be ready to run over the final four day test. Given Force India cited the fact that "learning opportunities would have been limited" as a reason not to run the VJM07 in Jerez, it will be interesting to see what programme they follow in Catalunya, especially as Mercedes’ inexperienced (but highly-regarded) reserve driver Pascal Wehrlein will be handling driving duties on two of the four days.

The young German is slated to drive in both of this year’s in-season tests for Vijay Mallya’s squad, so running the old car at Barcelona is extremely beneficial from that point of view, but otherwise you expect the team will concentrate primarily on tyre evaluation work. Such activity is always useful, though hardly ideal when every other team is racking up crucial development laps in their new machines. 

7. Will we get our first glimpse of how much faster F1 racing will be in 2015?
The sweeping rule changes of 2014 mean that the current technology in Formula One racing is still relatively new, and that has led to gains being made across the board ahead of the forthcoming campaign. Teams have refined their bodywork and aerodynamics, while the efficiency and output of power units has come on leaps and bounds. The upshot? Lap times are likely to be a whole lot faster this year.

That was already proved at Jerez, where Kimi Raikkonen’s test-topping 1m 20.841s was in the region of 2.5 seconds quicker than last year’s corresponding benchmark. But Barcelona, as a far more representative circuit, will offer a far more accurate glimpse into just how much laptime has been gained over the winter. The last time F1 visited the Catalan circuit in pre-season was 2013, when Nico Rosberg set an outright best of 1m 20.130s. Based on what we saw at Jerez, that may not be totally out of reach…

(source: f1.com)