Testing: Jerez, Day 2

Sebastien Buemi continued to show impressive form in testing at
Jerez, where the Swiss driver topped the times for the second day
running. Buemi’s time of 1:18.073 put him over half a second clear of Takuma Sato, as Toro Rosso dominated the session once again.

Buemi and Sato worked alongside Sebastien Bourdais, all three men
fighting for the two racing seats at the Italian squad. Four-time
ChampCar champion Bourdais was the slowest of the trio, finishing in
fourth place.

McLaren’s Pedro de la Rosa split the Toro Rossos as he worked for
the first time with a 2009 front wing fitted to the heavily revised
MP4-23A car.

The Spaniard was joined by Finn Heikki Kovalainen, who drove the
KERS test car. Kovalainen was sixth fastest behind compatriot Kimi
Raikkonen in the quickest of the Ferraris.

Raikkonen was left lamenting the lack of mileage done today, as the track was still wet in the morning.

"We haven’t done many kilometres over these two days, because the
conditions weren’t really good," he said. "We’re mainly trying to
understand how the slicks work and we’re testing some solutions the car
will use in the upcoming season.

"It’s useless to speculate about what will be in the future. Too
many things are different on the cars on the track. To get a precise
idea we have to wait until we all have the new cars."

Raikkonen’s teammate Felipe Massa arrived at 3:30pm straight from Brazil and joined the session to complete 27 laps.

Two-time world champion Fernando Alonso returned to action following
the end of the season, the Spaniard the only Renault driver on track
today. Alonso, who covered 105 laps, caused a red flag when he went off
track in the morning.

BMW-Sauber duo Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica finished as ninth and
11th quickest respectively, the Pole managing just 38 laps after
stopping on track around 2pm.

The third red flag of the day was caused by Williams driver Nico Rosberg.

Today’s times:

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time     Laps
 1.  Buemi         Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  1:18.073  128
 2.  Sato          Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  1:18.601   38
 3.  de la Rosa    McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:18.673   81
 4.  Bourdais      Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  1:19.032   78
 5.  Raikkonen     Ferrari              (B)  1:19.334   89
 6.  Kovalainen    McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:19.631   64
 7.  Alonso        Renault              (B)  1:19.907  106
 8.  Rosberg       Williams-Toyota      (B)  1:20.309  122
 9.  Heidfeld      BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:20.365   87
10.  Massa         Ferrari              (B)  1:20.490   27
11.  Kubica        BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:20.954   38

Well the new McLaren front nose and wing certainly reminded me of the MP4/20 (see photos here), and I still love that car which Kimi blitzed F1 in, at McLaren in 2005. Let’s hope the MP4/24 isn’t a sign of similar performance for next year! Because Kimi’s driving the Ferrari, so the Ferrari has to be faster, stronger and better.

Michael Schumacher’s choice of words always makes me laugh, and this time his comment about Kimi and Felipe going to be ‘hot’ next season made me giggle. He proclaims: "The way Ferrari always
responds: work even harder, concentrate even harder, compete even
harder," he said on his official website. "This is the basis of our
incredible winning streak – don’t lose yourself in discussions about
the past, join forces for the next steps." So far, we can’t really examine the times to judge what’s going on. We’ll just have to wait till next month (and hopefully Kimi will be more confident then and the long hair will stay, but considering the FIA Gala is this weekend he’ll probably have to clean up…grrr…) Keep Flying Kimi!