BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Rain and red flags caused plenty of delays for Williams, Ferrari, McLaren, Toyota, Red Bull and Renault at the Barcelona test last week.
Nico Rosberg’s Williams Toyota was fastest on the first day, Felipe Massa’s Ferrari on day two, and Kazuki Nakajima’s Williams on day three. Ferrari stayed on alone for an additional day.
Because of all the rain on the first two days, McLaren Mercedes only tested on day three. Heikki Kovalainen and Pedro de la Rosa were second and third quickest, but Massa, fourth, set an almost identical time.
With the two leading teams going head to head on only one day, comparisons were not easy. But Ferrari still has the edge over McLaren.
“We’ve finished our program,” Massa said. “We’ve done what we wanted. In the end, lap times are important but they aren’t the most important thing. We are behind [McLaren] by a few thousandths, so we have things to improve on the car, and things to develop for the future. We are where we wanted to be, but we can’t give up and we must carry on working.”
After another impressive showing of the FW30, confidence in the Williams camp is high.
“We’ve had plenty of running in the wet this week and we looked pretty good, which was positive,” Rosberg said. “It wasn’t that easy to drive in the conditions, it’s hard to keep the tires in the working window, especially without traction control, so you’re always quite on the limit.
“The last day was dry and so we managed to cover a lot of laps with no problems at all. Over the three days we got some important reliability issues sorted out. We seem to be progressing well with the new car and I am happy with the improvements we’re making.”
Fernando Alonso says that Renault has a long way to go to beat McLaren and Ferrari. However, his R28 was quick on its long runs.
“We have been waiting for a long time to do some dry running and we made the most of it,” Alonso said when the sun finally came out on day three.
“The track conditions were not perfect, but they were good enough for what we wanted to test and they remained consistent for the whole day. I was happy with the performance and behavior of the car.”
Toyota had a new aero package for the TF108 but was unable to fully test it because of the weather delays.
It also rained at Valencia where BMW Sauber was testing solo.
“We were able to complete a race simulation with both cars including pit stops without any problems,” Technical Director Willy Rampf said. “This underlines the high level of reliability of the new car. In addition we tested some newly developed parts.”