Schumacher
Michael Schumacher topped the timing screens after the second day of winter testing in Jerez, Mark Webber was the quickest of the new 2012 cars. Mercedes have decided not to bring the new car until the second test allowing them time to evaluate the new Pirelli tyres, they are allowed to use the Soft, Medium and Hard compounds at this test.
Daniel Ricciardo had a good session in the Toro Rosso completing 100 laps with his fastest time of 1:19.587 over one second behind his fellow Australian. The most laps completed today was by Heikki Kovalainen in the Caterham with a impressive 139 laps, Mike Gascoyne via twitter said “Really good day of testing today, 139 laps and lots of long runs on the tyres. Also very succesful first day with KERS on the car”. This is the first time they have run KERS but Heikki has used it before in 2009 when he was at Mclaren.
Jules Bianchi the new reserve driver at Force India got his outing in the new VJM05 and set a time of 1:20.221 before handing it over to Paul di Resta for the evening session.
Kimi Raikkonen after his impressive day yesterday topping the timing screen, just got the laps in today putting in 117 laps. He did have a trip into the gravel early on in the session. This meant that Lotus decided to change the plank under the car and the steering rack as it did not feel right after going out for another run.
Mclaren and Ferrari seem to be in the middle of the pack at the moment just learning about the new cars, not really putting in anything impressive so far. Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso will be in the cars tomorrow making sure they are comfortable with the setup and learning about the new car.
Final Times
Pos Driver Team Time Laps 1. Michael Schumacher Mercedes 1m18.561s 132 2. Mark Webber Red Bull 1m19.184s + 0.623 97 3. Daniel Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1m19.587s + 1.026 100 4. Jules Bianchi Force India 1m20.221s + 1.660 46 5. Kimi Raikkonen Lotus 1m20.239s + 1.678 117 6. Paul di Resta Force India 1m20.272s + 1.711 69 7. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m20.454s + 1.893 95 8. Jenson Button McLaren 1m20.688s + 2.127 85 9. Sergio Perez Sauber 1m20.711s + 2.150 68 10. Pastor Maldonado Williams 1m21.197s + 2.636 97 11. Heikki Kovalainen Caterham 1m21.518s + 2.957 139 12. Pedro de la Rosa HRT 1m22.128s + 3.567 64
