Red Bull Racing
Sebastian Vettel: “I’m happy that we got a lot of laps done. Unfortunately, we had a little bit of a problem, it was small, but with testing you stop whenever there’s a issue, take a look and see what’s what and that always takes up a bit of time. But nevertheless, in the afternoon I was quite happy. We got a lot of laps done, more than 100, so we got through most of the programme. I think we are on the right road with the car, the first impressions at the last test were fine. The car reacted the way we expected. I keep talking about the loss of downforce compared to last year, as we don’t have the tools we had, but this is the same for everyone, not just us. So, we’ll get on top of it and we’ll spend the coming days trying to make improvements, find more performance and make the car faster. But so far, so good.”
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
Lewis Hamilton: “To have completed more than 1000km in the past two days is incredibly encouraging – the whole team should feel proud. The car behaves really well in the high-speed corners – I think the baseline of our car is higher than it was last year – and it’s better overall at high-speed. It’s performing well in Turns Three and Nine, too. We don’t know the fuel-loads of the other cars, so it’s still hard to determine the pecking order. We didn’t bring any upgrades here, but our understanding of the car has developed since the test in Jerez. We’re learning more about how the tyres work, how the temperatures behave and how to balance the car using set-up. It’s been an extremely productive few days – and I think Jenson will continue to improve the car tomorrow. Now, I’m just looking forward to the final test – it’s where you get a really good feeling of where the car will be. It’s also exciting because it’s the last stop before the first race!”
Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro
Fernando Alonso: “At the moment, we are not where we want to be, nor where we want to be in Australia, but I remain optimistic. We still have six days of testing and we will see how it goes. It’s also hard to say how the others are doing: Red Bull is definitely very strong, as is normal in fact, given how they have gone over the past three years, but you can’t say that McLaren or Mercedes for example, who seem to be behind, are not strong themselves, maybe even more so than Red Bull. This has been a more laborious winter for us than in the past because we have a more complex car, which features very innovative ideas but that requires greater effort from everyone, from the drivers who drive it, the engineers who run and develop it and the mechanics who have to put in over twenty hour days. It’s always nice to have a car that is immediately ready, quick and reliable, but that is not always synonymous with winning. Last year, we did a race simulation at the end of the first test and then in Melbourne we were a second and a half off pole position.”
Mercedes
Nico Rosberg: “It was good to get into proper testing today. Early in the morning, it was a bit too cold on the track to collect some decent information, however later we were able to get into our planned work. In the afternoon session, unfortunately we had a transmission oil leak which meant that I wasn’t able to complete any further running. That doesn’t affect my positive feelings about our test programme, and things like that can happen in the early stages of running a new car. Now I am looking forward to driving again on Friday.”
Williams F1
Valtteri Bottas: “I really enjoyed today. It was great to get back in the car as I have been waiting for this day since I took part in the young driver test in Abu Dhabi last year. The FW34 again showed good reliability, as we completed 117 laps while doing some interesting tests with the car set-up. I’m looking forward to assisting the team at race weekends this season and can’t wait to drive the car again.”
Sahara Force India
Nico Hulkenberg: “We started the day with some aero work – trying some constant speed runs and collecting more data. Then, the rest of the day was spent working on the balance of the car and trying out all four tyre compounds. I did some short runs, long runs and just got a feel for the tyre characteristics and how the car reacts to them. Once again the car has been very drivable all day and our baseline set-up has proved to be a good starting point for running all the different compounds.”
Sauber F1 Team
Sergio Pérez: “Today was a lot better, even though in the end we lost a bit of track time because of the exhaust problem. I am happy with how things went, we have gathered plenty of information to go through now and I believe we are working in the right direction. I hope we get some more work done with Kamui driving the next two days, and then we will be well prepared for next week’s final pre-season test session.”
Scuderia Toro Rosso
Daniel Ricciardo: “The afternoon did not go to plan, but the morning was positive and we did all the runs we had planned for the first part of the day. We worked on making adjustments to the car balance, also trying some different mechanical changes to the car, which is why I did mainly short runs. I could feel the effect of these changes and the car reacted in the way we expected.”
Caterham F1 Team
Vitaly Petrov: “I think that was a pretty positive day. We completed 69 laps and got through most of what we had planned. This morning we had a couple of issues with the seating position and the brakes, but you expect that from a new car and they were little things that we were able to fix quickly. In the afternoon we put in a few more long runs and that’ll give us a lot of data to work on tonight and I think tomorrow it will be more of the same. Physically I feel really good. It’s obviously been a while since I’ve been in a car, but I’ve kept up my fitness levels and I enjoyed myself on track, so it’s a good first day back. One thing I have noticed is that this car behaves a little differently from my previous experience and I think I may have to adjust my driving style to get the best out of it – I’ve been quite aggressive before, but I think this car responds better to smoother inputs, so that’s something I can work on, and work with the engineers on. Let’s see what we can come up with for tomorrow.”
Marussia F1 Team
Charles Pic: “Another good day for me today with more important mileage. It was a very interesting morning as we tried quite a few setup changes and it was very good for me to gain this experience. This afternoon we completed two long runs as part of a race simulation to enable us to work on tyre degradation and we made a run with low fuel at the end. The past two days have been good for me and I’m looking forward to being in the car again on Friday.”
