Source: lotusf1team.com | f1elvis.com | f1zone.net
Kimi Räikkönen concluded his second day of running at Barcelona with a gearbox problem keeping him off the track for much of the morning and part of the afternoon session at the Circuit de Catalunya.
Whilst the team ultimately diagnosed and rectified the issue, vital running time was lost. Once Kimi did get out on track, he immediately set the third fastest lap time, which is where he ended the day. Romain will take the wheel of E21 chassis 02 for the next two days
Fast Facts:
Track: Barcelona, Spain, 5.9km
Chassis: E21-02
Weather: Sunny, ambient 7-17°C, track 8-24°C
Programme: Systems checks, temperature monitoring, data correlation, assessment of the performance of the car with its initial aerodynamic package
Laps Completed: 43
Classification: P3, 1:22.697
Interruptions: Gearbox problem diagnosis and replacement
Kimi Räikkönen: “If yesterday wasn’t an ideal day then today was more of the same. Fortunately, once we were able to get a lap in we could see that the car has good pace. We test to find any problems so in that respect we’re doing a good job, but it’s frustrating. It’s no secret that we want to get more laps on the board and that’s the target for the rest of this test and the final sessions next week.”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: “Our target was more laps today and we’ve missed that. We were able to diagnose a problem with the gearbox, but rectifying this took quite a lot of time. This severely affected our plans for the day but yet again we were able to show we have a quick car. On the positive side, there were no further problems with telemetry as we experienced yesterday and the second gearbox ran reliably in the afternoon. Tomorrow we will try to rack up the laps with evaluation work and a race distance simulation.”
Video: Kimi speaks to MTV3 after test
Kimi unconcerned by lack of running
“Even if you don’t do any testing you might go to the race and be fast and have no issue,” he said.
“If you do 10,000 kilometres you still might have an issue. Whatever laps you do, you might be OK or not OK.
“That’s testing, there are problems and you learn from those.
“It’s not like if we cannot manage 150 laps [on a test day] it’s going to change our season.”
Raikkonen was also calm about the length of time it took to change the gearbox on Wednesday. He sat out most of the morning before hitting the track for the final two hours.
“Sometimes the issues take so long to fix but this is pretty normal when you are at the first tests and you don’t have so many spare parts yet and you don’t have the extra gearbox to just fit in the car,” he said.
KIMI RÄIKKÖNEN SPACE 