Why Does It Always Rain On Me? - Barcelona Test, Day 1

Romain Grosjean returned to the Circuit de Catalunya for another day of testing in cold and wet conditions in Barcelona. The team ran through a programme of assessments and correlations, including work on the DDRS Device.

With the unfavourable track conditions, only short aerodynamic runs were conducted in the afternoon.

Fast Facts:

• Track: Barcelona, Spain, 5.9km
  
• Chassis: E21-02
  
• Weather: Cloudy, frequent showers, ambient 8-10°C, track 8-12°C
  
• Programme: System checks, temperature monitoring, data correlation, assessment of the performance of the car with its initial aerodynamic package, DDRS Device correlation
  
• Laps Completed: 52
  
• Classification: P11, 1:34.928
  
• Interruptions: Red flags
  

What’s Next?

Romain returns to the E21 for his final day of pre-season testing tomorrow.

Romain Grosjean:

“Another day with bad weather in Barcelona is not what I wanted, but there’s nothing you can do about it. It was a bit of a frustrating day as we concentrated on aero runs and never went for a time on the drying track surface. The car feels good on both the intermediate and wet tyres and we’ve run through more of our pre-season test programme so those are positives. You never want to see yourself at the bottom of the timing screens, so hopefully that’s the only time it happens this season. We certainly know there’s more pace in the car than we saw today!”

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director:

“Given the weather, this morning’s session concentrated on running assessments between the wet and intermediate tyres and we’re getting a much better idea of Pirelli’s 2013 wet tyres. In the afternoon we concentrated on assessing our rear wing DDRS Device. These conditions aren’t great as it’s difficult to run comparison tests with an ever changing track surface. Nevertheless, we’ve clocked up more laps on the E21, tried different settings and conducted numerous aero-runs. This meant that our lap time today was very far from what we’d expect had we conducted a more normal test programme.”