Friday 31 January 2014

Massa leads the way on the final day of an eventful first week of testing

(Williams F1 Team via Twitter)

Felipe Massa topped the time sheets for the Williams F1 Team on the final day of an extremely busy opening week of winter testing in Jerez.

The Brazilian's fastest time of 1m 28.229 was enough to keep him ahead of Ferrari's Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard, driving the F14T for the second day completed 115 laps, the most of any other driver. Daniel Juncadella was third for the Sahara Force India F1 Team.

McLaren's new driver, Kevin Magnussen continued to show impressive pace and finished the day in fourth place, however it was not all plain sailing for the Danish driver as he crashed the MP4-29 bringing out the red flags jsut before the end of the session.

The Woking based squad should be very happy with their progress this week having missed the opening day of testing due to a technical issue as Jenson Button was fastest on Wednesday while Kevin Magnussen was fastest yesterday on his first afternoon testing for the team as a full McLaren driver.

Ferrari have been very quick to say that they are pleased with their progress this week and as an engine supplier the Italian marque have covered 404 laps. However the momentum is currently with Mercedes as their teams have covered a staggering 849 laps over the course of the four day test. Despite a front wing failure on Tuesday morning when Lewis Hamilton was behind the wheel of the W05 the Brackley based squad can be extremely satisfied as Nico Rosberg completed a dull race simulation this morning which means they are ahead of their rivals as the other teams have been using this week to work on systems checks and set-up.

The Marussia F1 Team can also be very happy with their work this week as despite missing the first two days of the test due to a technical glitch Max Chilton was extremely happy with how his day went yesterday while Jules Bianchi completed 25 laps and recorded the sixth fastest time of the day.

It was a disappointing day for the Caterham F1 Team as they suffered a power unit component failure this after which meant that Kamui Kobayashi had to end his day early.

Adrian Sutil did a great job for the Sauber F1 Team on his second day in the C33 as he completed 69 laps and finished the day in 7th place. 

It was another extremely disappointing day for the Red Bull Racing team as once again they were forced to finish their day early as they have been having problems with the Renault ERS although today's issue was due to cooling issues with their new RB10. The team elected not run this afternoon and packed up just before lunch and headed back to their base in the UK where team boss Christian Horner and chief designer Adrian Newey returned yesterday in order to find a solution to the issue.

The Milton Keynes based squad have had a terrible week as they only managed to cover 21 laps over the four days of testing in Jerez.

This week, the total number of laps completed in Jerez was 1,410. The next winter test gets underway at the Bahrain International Circuit from February 19th -22nd.


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