Jolyon Palmer in the E23 (and below)
Jolyon Palmer had his first taste of the Lotus F1 E23 hybrid in his role as third and reserve driver. Over the course of 77 laps at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Jolyon ran through a programme of tyre and aero assessments, setting a best lap of 1min 26.280secs.
Track: Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Spain, 4.7km
Chassis: E23-02
Weather: Cold and sunny. Ambient 4°C – 17°C Track 7°C – 27°C
Programme: Tyre and aero assessments
Laps Completed: 77
Classification: P8, 1:26.280
Interruptions: Aero evaluation equipment fitting and removal. Fluid replenishment.
Jolyon Palmer: “Today went well. We racked up a lot of laps and I got a good feel for the car. It was very slippery first thing with the cold track, it was certainly very difficult with the hard tyres combined with the low temperatures! Through the day there was a good mix of conditions and set-ups to work with. There was a lot to take on board with the different settings for the car and the different programmes we were running, so it’s been a pretty steep learning curve. It’s been a very positive start for me and I hope my work has benefited the team. I loved being in the car and I can’t wait to get back out on track!”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: “Today was about data accumulation and Jolyon did a great job in his first time in the car, especially with particularly cold conditions to start the session here this morning. We’ve completed a number of aero runs with a variety of different data collection tools on the car as well as conducted a number of different tyre assessments to build a picture of what to expect from Pirelli’s latest tyres working on the E23. The car has run well again and overall we’re making good progress this week.”
Williams
Driver: Felipe Massa
Chassis/Engine: FW37-02/PU106B hybrid
Location: Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, 4.655km
Objectives: Systems, set-up and tyre work
Weather: Warm and Dry
Air and track temps: 4 – 15ºC / 9 – 27ºC
Rod Nelson, Chief Test and Support Engineer: “It has been another productive day. Barcelona is a good representative circuit so the data we get here is very useful. We had a lot of work to do with Felipe which we covered. Our focus is moving from reliability and long runs to more performance based tests and I am pleased with how the car has run so far in Barcelona.”
Felipe Massa: “The car has a lot of potential and today we realised some of that but we still have a lot of work to do. We completed the programme for the day without any unexpected issues. The work on tyres this afternoon gave us a lot of good data which we now have to look at. Getting more laps in the FW37 is important for the continued development of the car.”
Sahara Force India made the most of the second day of testing in Barcelona, as Sergio Perez completed a total of 121 laps – the second highest tally in the field.
Sergio Perez #11
Chassis: VJM07-02
Laps: 121 laps
Mileage: 563 km
Fastest lap: 1:24.702
Classification: P4 of 10
Sergio Perez: “I am really happy with the way the day went and by the amount of laps we managed to complete. We worked on understanding the new tyres and I think we took a good step forward in that respect; of course, we are waiting for our ‘new baby’ to come and we’re really looking forward to put all the learning we did in the last two days into practice with the new car. On a personal level, these days have also been valuable to get to know my new race and performance engineers: we made good progress and I am looking forward to even more when working on the simulator this coming week.”
Tom McCullough, Chief Race Engineer “It was a very productive day with a solid 121 laps and no technical issues. Our main objectives of the day were for Sergio to get to know his new engineering team better, in addition to lots of set-up and procedural work. We continued the evaluation of the 2015 Pirelli tyres we started yesterday, working through performance running in the morning and long runs in the afternoon. The data we gathered today will be really useful not just for the first few races, but also for the final test next week. We are looking forward to continuing our testing programme over the final two days.”
A rather thoughtful looking Perez
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