Barcelona Test, Day 2: Clocking up the miles

• 18/02/2011

  Barcelona Test, Day 1: Pit stop practice complete

• 18/02/2011

  18.02.11 Update on Robert

• 16/02/2011

  Nick Heidfeld joins Lotus Renault GP

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It was a more productive day at the track as Vitaly drove the R31 this morning, before Nick took over driving duties in the afternoon.

Drivers: Vitaly / Nick
Chassis: R31-01
Fastest Laps: Vitaly: 1:26.884 / Nick 1:24.242
Position: P11 Vitaly P5 Nick
Total laps: 61 for Vitaly 41 for Nick

What we learned today:

- The R31 was fitted with some new parts to the water system, which successfully resolved the problems the team experienced in Jerez.

- The team logged some useful data from its suspension set-up programme in the afternoon, evaluating changes to the front and rear systems.

Vitaly: "After losing the track time yesterday, it was nice to be back in the car this morning and we completed quite a lot of laps. We found a lot of new things and worked on the general set-up, as well as understanding how the tyres are performing. It's quite cold here, especially compared to Jerez, so it was difficult to warm up the tyres to begin with, but we've learned quite a lot from the short runs we did."

Nick: "The balance of the car was not as good as it was in Jerez, but we did improve things by the end of the day. We lost a bit of time at the start of the afternoon, but when I did get out we did some useful work including new tyre runs, data collection and some work on the car's systems. But we still need lots more mileage because there are a lot of things on our job list to try, especially for the set-up of the car."

Alan Permane's technical programme notes

- The main task of the day was to put some miles on the car to make up for the track time we lost yesterday.

- We focussed on medium-length runs of eight to ten laps, and worked on the set-up and understanding the tyres on this track. We ran on three out of the four dry tyre compounds, evaluating both new and scrubbed sets.

Did You Know?
Around 250,000 man hours have already gone into the design of the R31.