Red Bull
Sebastian Vettel: “It was a good day and a good time, although to be honest, it’s difficult to say where we are, as the lap times of the teams are all over the place. We’ve done a lot of laps again today, which is good. We have had no major problems with reliability throughout testing and the speed looks good as far as we can judge, but I think we have to wait until after Melbourne – maybe in Malaysia or China – to really see where we are.”
Ian Morgan: “It was good to have the race team here yesterday and today, to go through pit stop practices. Normally, we would do that once in pre-season testing but, as we lost a little time with the weather at the last test, this extra test was a good opportunity to get some more practice in ahead of Melbourne.
“As for the rest of today’s programme, it was much the same as yesterday. Seb did 112 laps without any real problems all day, which is gratifying. It’s always difficult though, to tell what your true position is until you start the season, but our pace looks good at the moment, which is promising.”
Toro Rosso
Sebastien Buemi: “We can be pleased with what we achieved today, because with 120 laps, it meant we completed all the programme we had planned. Apart from the race simulation, I was also able to do a qualifying simulation. We showed a reasonable performance level and the team did a very good job in preparing the car so well. Overall, it has been a productive test. Now, we must wait and see if we can make even more progress over the next two days with Jaime driving and then we can see where we really are when we get to Melbourne.”
Renault
Vitaly Petrov: “I’m pleased with what we achieved today and I was able to learn a lot about the car and the tyres. We spent the morning doing shorter runs and working on the set-up, and I was pretty happy with the car by the end of the morning. But the most important thing was to complete the race distance, which we managed this afternoon. It’s the first time I’ve been able to do consistent long runs and really start understanding the tyres.”
Williams
Sam Michael: “It has not been a productive day for us after we had a KERS fault first thing this morning. We removed the system and were able to get out for some limited running late afternoon.”
Pastor Maldonado: “It hasn’t been a good day as we didn’t complete our planned programme. We unfortunately didn’t get enough running in to make too much progress.”
Sauber F1
James Key: “Today we ran a similar programme to yesterday to allow Kamui to evaluate the new parts on the car and give us his feedback. We ran various set up options to check their effectiveness, and to help us to learn more about future development directions. In the afternoon we also did a little bit of work dedicated to the tyres, and again gained some valuable data. Now we are looking forward to doing race simulations with both drivers – with Sergio tomorrow and Kamui on Friday.”
Kamui Kobayashi: “It was an interesting and productive day for me, and we completed our programme as planned. We achieved a good mileage and learnt a lot. The set up work with the new car is different to last year’s car, and it is good to get more experience with that. In the afternoon the way the track evolved was quite significant, and we struggled a bit with adapting the car and finding the right balance. But this is nothing to worry about.”
Force India
Paul di Resta: “A reasonable day of running for us today and good reliability and clear weather meant we could get through all of our programme. In the morning I worked through the qualifying sims and in the afternoon it was onto the race runs. I’ve done pit stops before in practice last year but trying them in race conditions was a new experience. However they were similar in length to what I’ve experienced in the DTM over the past four years so I think I dealt with them OK. I’ll have a break tomorrow while Adrian takes over the car to test some new aero upgrades we’re running for the first time. I’ll get my chance to run them on Friday and look forward to seeing how much time they will give.”
Dominic Harlow: “Paul was back in the car today, this time for a full day of running. In a productive outing he covered over 500km, running our standard Saturday practice and qualifying programmes before lunch and then moving to a full race simulation in the afternoon. We also had our full race crew here today to give them some live pit stop practice. Reliability was good again, which allowed us to cover our primary objectives for today. Paul takes a break tomorrow and Adrian will be in the car for the full day.”
Team Lotus
Jarno Trulli: “We’re pretty happy with how the day went – completing 98 laps gave us a chance to work through a number of setup options and we collected a lot of useful data on the tyre degradation. They’re behaving pretty much how we expected them to and the changes we made to the car gave us the results we wanted so we’ll look through all the information we’ve gathered and see if we can take another step forward tomorrow.”
Mike Gascoyne: “Today was a very good day for us, much more productive than a couple of the days we have had in testing so far. It is good to complete 98 laps with no real problems on the car. We concentrated on long runs, looking at tyre degradation and setup options, and the pitcrew worked through a number of pitstop practices in advance of the first race so we ran through the entire plan and everyone is happy with the work that has been done today.”
