A.Wayne

Red Bull wins my vote for best looking 09/ F1 car


General car development for Red Bull at Barcelona

F1 Test, Barcelona, Circuit de Catalunya
Every Formula One team entered in the 2009 World Championship is present here at the Catalunya Circuit, near Barcelona, for the final dress rehearsal in the form of a four day test, the last official session prior to the Australian Grand Prix.

Recent tests in Spain have been blighted by bad weather, but apart from a few worrying drops in the early morning, sunshine has been the order of the day. Red Bull Racing is here with another new chassis, number 3, so the first item on today's agenda was a shakedown, which went off according to plan. Once that was completed, it was back to general car development work prior to the season opener in Melbourne, evaluating various new aero and mechanical components. At the same time, Mark Webber ran a comparison between the Bridgestone "medium" and "soft" tyres. By the end of the day, the car had also completed enough laps to sign off a durability check on the Renault engine, which had been carried over from last week's Jerez test.

Mark Webber continues driving tomorrow, before handing over to Sebastian Vettel for the final two days.

Flying Finn

Looks good and reminds me to add the photos from Barcelona, Brawn GP car:
(you don't see F1 car lifting wheel too often)

Flying Finn

It's never enough!

Come pick up the bottle.

A.Wayne

Will attempt to

Brawn GP will struggle ..................Jenson is slower than the very Mature Barrichello the team dynamics is being driven by barrichello/ Brawn not with jenson , brawn needs a top level drover to build with ...

ltc

The preceeding announcement was a paid advertisement for the Sir A.Wayne 2010 Alonso Ride Campaign.....

ltc

In the first picture of the Red Bull car, anyone notice the suspended 'teardrop' element under the car? Looks a bit like a dragged sonar pod.

Looks like Newey hasn't lost his touch at all.

A.Wayne

Yep! still the best ...................................

A.Wayne

I was more thinking more along the lines of Senna, Pantano and or maybe DiGrassi,or Alexander Rossi ... for sure Rossi should have his name on a contract for placement in 2- 3 yrs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_BMW..

It is understandable that Brawn needs Button for commercial value ...................

A.Wayne

By Pablo Elizalde Tuesday, March 10th 2009, 16:21 GMT

Kimi Raikkonen dominated the second day of testing at the Barcelona circuit, where all Formula One teams were again in action on Tuesday.

Ferrari driver Raikkonen posted a best time of 1:20.314 onboard the F60 to finish over half a second in front of his closest rival, Williams's Kazuki Nakajima.

Raikkonen's day, however, was cut short after a problem with the KERS cooling system. The Finn covered just 55 laps.

The Brawn GP team continued to show good form in their first public outing, with Rubens Barrichello setting the third fastest time after a total of 111 laps.

The Brazilian, who had not driven an F1 car since the end of the 2008 season, got his first taste of the BGP-001 after taking over from teammate Jenson Button.

Jarno Trulli had another solid day for Toyota, completing 121 laps on his way to the fourth quickest time of the day, ahead of Red Bull's Mark Webber and BMW's Sauber Nick Heidfeld.

"Today was my last day of testing for the winter," said Trulli. "We again did a lot of laps including some interesting long runs as we finalised our preparations for Melbourne.

"It's clear we will only find out the true picture in Australia but I'm happy with our work in the course of the tests we've done. The car has been competitive and consistent so we can head into the first race with confidence. I feel ready."

Renault's Fernando Alonso had a low-key session, finishing down in eighth position.

"It was another good day for us, again covering lots of laps as we continue to get ready for the start of the season later this month," he said.

"The track conditions were good and we tried lots of things with the set-up, which has given us lots of useful data to look through tonight. We also worked on the aero and mechanical balance of the car with some interesting results. "

McLaren also had a discreet day, with Heikki Kovalainen again near the bottom of the times after 88 laps.

"We are running through a big programme in Barcelona this week," said McLaren Racing managing director Jonathan Neale. "Not only have we introduced a new series of aerodynamic components to MP4-24 but we have also been working on the car's set-up and balance over longer runs as well as rehearsing our pitstop procedures.

"It's been a very productive few days with Heikki in the car and we are hoping for an equally satisfactory conclusion to the week when Lewis takes to the track tomorrow."

The Toro Rosso team, who unveiled their new car yesterday, had a poor outing this time out, with Sebastien Bourdais managing just 14 laps before the STR4 suffered a problem with the front suspension.

The team were unable to solve it without the arrival of new parts from the factory back in Faenza.

Teammate Sebastien Buemi took over in the afternoon, but the Swiss completed only six laps, bringing Toro Rosso's total to a disappointing 20 for the whole session.

Today's times:

Pos Driver Team Time Laps
1. Raikkonen Ferrari (B) 1:20.314 55
2. Nakajima Williams-Toyota (B) 1:20.907 66
3. Barrichello Brawn-Mercedes (B) 1:20.966 111
4. Trulli Toyota (B) 1:21.182 121
5. Webber Red Bull-Renault (B) 1:21.347 66
6. Heidfeld BMW-Sauber (B) 1:21.615 127
7. Sutil Force India-Mercedes (B) 1:21.834 82
8. Alonso Renault (B) 1:21.937 111
9. Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:21.991 88
10. Bourdais Toro Rosso-Ferrari (B) 1:23.039 14
11. Buemi Toro Rosso-Ferrari (B) no time 6

All Timing Unofficial


Yesterday :

Results
Pos. Driver Team Time Laps
1. Nick Heidfeld BMW Sauber 1:20.338 96
2. Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 1:20.908 81
3. Jarno Trulli Toyota 1:20.937 121
4. Jenson Button Brawn GP 1:21.140 82
5. Nelson Piquet Renault 1:21.662 126
6. Sebastien Bourdais Toro Rosso 1:22.158 86
7. Mark Webber Red Bull 1:22.246 117
8. Adrian Sutil Force India 1:22.452 129
9. Kazuki Nakajima Williams 1:22.813 111
10. Heikki Kovalainen McLaren 1:22.948 90

multi21

No doubt Newey studied nautical designs and their elements when he was thinking of leaving F1 and designing America's Cup Challenger boats. This must be something he learned and incorporated into this design. Either that or he's screwing with all the other designers heads....

ew928

Can you imagine how crazy a under nose cam would be.
Mere inches off the ground going at 150 mph.

jgrant

That's what I thought it might be.

Red Bull has been FANTASTIC about putting together all sorts of cool multimedia, and I was wondering if this was a car set up for some awesome camera work.

Maybe not during the race, but maybe for some promo or testing coverage.

Flying Finn

McLaren has been sucking ***** for past few tests...

MJSpeed

Man these things are just ugly!

As for times...they don't mean ****!

Flying Finn

+1 on both although McLaren's lack of grip has caused them to do extra development so something is ****ed up there at the moment...

Latest from Barcelona, Kimi had to jump out of his car because it had a KERS problem which meant there was a possible electric shock danger.

I'm telling you, this friggin' KERS will end up hurting someone, besides that I think it was stupid to do it the way it was done so that every team developed their own system instead of doing it like the common ECU, why wasn't it done as Williams has done it (mechanically instead of electronically) is beyond me.