Testing: Jerez, Day 1

Sebastien Buemi further staked his claim for a seat at Scuderia Toro
Rosso next year by outpacing teammate Sebastian Bourdais on the first
day of this week’s test at Jerez in Spain.

With teams running different programmes and car specifications in
preparation for the 2009 season, little could be read into the relevant
times of the cars, but Buemi’s effort compared to Bourdais will have
provided a further boost in his hopes of landing a contract for 2009.

The test got underway properly quite late thanks to early fog and
damp track conditions, and meaningful running was curtailed by showers
from 3pm.

McLaren test driver Gary Paffett kicked off the team’s preparations
with the third quickest time as he focused on KERS development. The
Briton ended up just three hundredths of a second ahead of teammate
Pedro de la Rosa, who concentrated on set-up evaluation.

Kimi Raikkonen returned to the cockpit for the first time since his
demonstration run at the World Finals at Mugello last month to set the
fifth quickest time. He worked on set-up and long distance evaluation
of the Ferrari engine.

The Finnish driver, behind the wheel of a F2008 with less downforce, to
simulate the situation foreseen by the technical rules for the 2009
season, went out on the track just after 9 am. He didn’t drive too many
laps, because the weather was not really good and, after 3pm, the
track was wet, but also because the mileage at the end of the season is
limited. The team mainly worked on the best possible set up with the
slicks and on the engine, which has to run further in the upcoming
season.

"I’m glad to be back on the track," Kimi said at the end of the
day. "Shame that there was so much rain in the afternoon, because it
would have been useful to test some situations we had problems with
during the last season. It shouldn’t rain tomorrow and we’ll drive a
bit more."

Sixth fastest Nick Heidfeld focused on set-up work with the
suspension, as well as aerodynamic development progress for BMW Sauber
– and was happy that mechanical changes made since the last test at
Barcelona had improved the handling.

"It looks like we are moving in the right direction," said Heidfeld.

Behind Kazuki Nakajima and Nelson Piquet, Christian Klien only
managed to complete 15 laps after being forced to stop early because of
a precautionary engine change. He had been tasked with work on BMW’s
KERS system.

Pos Driver               Team                    Time      Laps
1.  Sebastien Buemi      Scuderia Toro Rosso     1:18.742    91
2.  Sebastien Bourdais   Scuderia Toro Rosso     1:19.288    77
3.  Gary Paffett         McLaren Mercedes        1:20.134    26
4.  Pedro de la Rosa     McLaren Mercedes        1:20.164    21
5.  Kimi Raikkonen       Ferrari                 1:20.261    48
6.  Nick Heidfeld        BMW Sauber              1:20.678    49
7.  Kazuki Nakajima      Williams                1:21.338    57
8.  Nelson Piquet        Renault                 1:21.547   124
9.  Christian Klien      BMW Sauber              1:22.098    15

So Kimi’s race engineer Chris Dyer wasn’t at the test today, but Felipe’s engineer Rob Smedley was. Okay! Kimi looked rather tired, and probably would have loved to sleep in on a rainy cold morning (see all the pics from today here). Felipe joins in tomorrow too, but hopefully the weather will improve anyway. Kimi wants to get down to the roots of the problems, which he had this year as he said, so hopefully everything goes as planned.