Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Glock quickest at wet Jerez

Glock quickest at wet Jerez

Poor weather hindered Formula One testing once again this year, as rain hit the second day of work at the Jerez circuit.

The rain began to fall very early on and the asphalt was never dry enough to use slick tyres so teams were forced to make the best of the situation.

Timo Glock emerged as the quickest driver in the conditions, posting a best time of 1:30.979 after 89 laps of the Spanish track.

Glock took over from teammate Kamui Kobayashi at the wheel of the Toyota TF109, the German happy with his day's work despite the poor weather.

"It tends to be difficult to carry out meaningful testing when there is so much rain," said Glock. "The conditions made things tricky again today but at least it stayed consistently wet so we were able to go through some work on set-up and tyres.

"It also gave me a chance to get used to pushing the TF109 in these conditions and we put more mileage on the car. It felt good again, just like in Portugal last month, so I'm happy with the day."

BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica was second quickest as he worked on set-up options for the F1.09, his day being interrupted by a false electrical alarm that forced him to stop the car on track.

Williams's Nico Rosberg posted the third fastest time in the FW31, with Giancarlo Fisichella showing promising pace in the new Force India-Mercedes car, the Italian setting the fourth quickest time of the day despite covering just 54 laps.

Yesterday's pace-setter Sebastian Vettel had a more low-key session today in the Red Bull, finishing as fifth fastest ahead of Heikki Kovalainen in the McLaren.

Nelson Piquet was again slowest in the Renault, the Brazilian finishing over two seconds of Glock's pace.

"The wet weather today meant we had to change our programme and
simply worked on getting miles on the car and using the wet weather tyres," said Piquet.

"Because it continued raining throughout the day, the track conditions remained pretty consistent and so we were still able to learn some interesting things about the car."

The Ferrari team were also present at the track but decided not to run.

Today's times:

Pos Driver Team Time Laps 1. Glock Toyota (B) 1:30.979 89 2. Kubica BMW-Sauber (B) 1:31.327 70 3. Rosberg Williams-Toyota (B) 1:31.451 114 4. Fisichella Force India-Mercedes (B) 1:31.547 54 5. Vettel Red Bull-Renault (B) 1:32.220 102 6. Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:33.371 91 7. Piquet Renault (B) 1:33.476 66 All Timing Unofficial

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