Felipe Massa topped the timesheets for Williams on the second last day of pre-season testing overnight. His time of 1:33.258 is the quickest lap posted at Bahrain in seven days of testing.
“We did a lot more performance work in the car which is something that we haven’t done so much of so far,” Felipe explained. “I’m really happy with the car and feel we found a good balance. We did so much work on the set-up but it is very important that we go to Australia prepared.
“You can never be sure that you are 100% ready for the first race, but I feel that what we have done in these days testing has been important for making sure that we have a car that can not only get to the end of the race, but that will have good performance as well.”
Meanwhile, at Red Bull it was a total disaster. Sebastian Vettel was three hours late onto the Sakhir circuit and when he did finally emerge he could only manage half a lap due to an “electrical fault”. Red Bull worked on the car and got him out again, this time though, he didn’t even make it to the end of pit lane. The fault was pinned down to a “leak” according to Andy Damerum, Race Engineering Co-ordinator. And that was the end of Sebastian’s day!
“We can just hope for a better day tomorrow and then to have a decent start to the season in Melbourne but at this stage obviously reliability is still a big question mark,” a forlorn Vettel said. “It’s difficult to say how long it will take to remedy. I think some things will just come down to the fact that in two weeks’ time we’ll have lots of new parts on the car.
“We’ve had some damage because of the problems we’ve had here and the parts aren’t available overnight, so from that side I think things will get better over the next couple of weeks. We obviously haven’t done much running but from the little we have done has been quite promising, so I think once we get going the speed should be OK.”
Elsewhere things were better for Nico Rosberg (1:33.484) who overcame an early engine change to complete 103 laps and set the second fastest time. A couple of seconds back was Kimi Raikkonen (1:35.426) in the Ferrari, who managed 87 laps but was still unhappy with his lot. Thank goodness he didn’t go to Red Bull!
Two F1 rookies were next in the always impressive Kevin Magnussen (McLaren, 1:35.894) and Daniil Kvyat (Toro Ross, 1:36.113). For a brief moment Kvyat’s time was on top of the lap charts but he’ll be more than happy with his 81 laps, the most time he’s had in an F1 car so far this winter.
Nico Hulkenberg (1:36.113) oversaw another solid day for Force India with the sixth fastest time, while Jules Bianchi (1:37.087) and Marussia will be enjoying the rarified air found further up the order than they’re used to being.
Marcus Ericcson (1:38.083) totalled 117 laps which tends to mask the issues being suffered by the Renault-powered teams. Caterham has covered the most miles of the Renault teams so far this the pre-season, they’re just way off the pace.
Ninth fastest was Romain Grosjean (1:42.166) who got an early shower after just 33 laps and seeing the Lotus E22 fail due to an MGU-K fault.
Then came the woes of Adrian Sutil who smoked the engine of his Sauber C33 after just one lap and the lapless Vettel right at the bottom of the timesheets.
One day of testing left and a lifetime of problems facing Red Bull. Can they recover?
