Barcelona test - day two: 2 October.
West McLaren-Mercedes driver Alexander Wurz set the pace for the second successive day today [Wednesday] at the Barcelona circuit, Spain.
The Austrian F1 test driver completed 71 laps setting a best time of 1 minute 16.352 seconds, two seconds up on his team-mate, David Coulthard.
DC managed only 41 laps - his best a 1m 18.453s. Next up was the BMW WilliamsF1 duo of Marc Gene and Antonio Pizzonia - both split by only one hundredth of a second.
West McLaren-Mercedes driver Alexander Wurz set the pace for the second successive day today [Wednesday] at the Barcelona circuit, Spain.
The Austrian F1 test driver completed 71 laps setting a best time of 1 minute 16.352 seconds, two seconds up on his team-mate, David Coulthard.
DC managed only 41 laps - his best a 1m 18.453s. Next up was the BMW WilliamsF1 duo of Marc Gene and Antonio Pizzonia - both split by only one hundredth of a second.
Tim Newton - Test Team Manager for WilliamsF1 told the official BMW WilliamsF1 website: "On the first day back at Barcelona since two weeks ago, we worked on a variety of system and component tests."
"Marc put more miles on the new engine, and Antonio focused on general set-up for systems and components. There were a few delays, but that is to be expected when testing new developments."
Then came the two Toyota's of Ryan Briscoe and Stephane Sarrazin. Briscoe spent the day working on set-up with the current TF102 race-car, while Sarrazin worked with the TF102B.
The Frenchman though completed only 20 laps - technical problems limiting his programme. Sarrazin commented: "Today did not go as smoothly as yesterday since we encountered a few problems that cost us quite a bit of running time. But this is part of development work."
"Our programme is based on checking and improving the durability and performance of the 2003 elements that are already on the TF102B, and this is exactly what we have been doing today by sorting out the difficulties we experienced."
BAR-Honda's Ryo Fukuda was the only other runner at the track, taking over from Anthony Davidson. He completed 70 trouble free laps, his best a 1m 21.749s, a good second off the pace of Sarrazin, and over five seconds off the pace setting McLaren of Wurz.
Testing continues again tomorrow [Thursday].
Leading times (2 October) - Barcelona:
1. Alex Wurz McLaren-Mercedes 1m 16.352s 71 laps**
2. David Coulthard McLaren-Mercedes 1m 18.453s 41 laps**
3. Marc Gen? Williams-BMW 1m 18.797s 49 laps**
4. Antonio Pizzonia Williams-B
5. Ryan Briscoe Toyota 1m 20.224s 62 laps**
6. Stephane Sarrazin Toyota 1m 20.840s 20 laps**
7. Ryo Fukuda BAR-Honda 1m 21.749s 70 laps*
Key:
* - Bridgestone tyres
** - Michelin tyres
Weather / Track conditions: Cloudy.
