Davidson was also pretty pleased, even if his running was disrupted somewhat by the weather: “It was not a straight forward test. Taku had a good couple of days when the weather was fine and the general balance of the car was good. When I took over in the afternoon (on day 2) I was expecting a nice balance, but I couldn't get to grips with the set-up. I felt more confident in the car by the final day though and the lap times were quite good. The test here has been very valuable for me as it is a circuit that I did not know well and I have learnt a lot from our time here this week.”
The focus now shifts to the Malaysian Grand Prix itself and managing director, Daniel Audetto has vowed that they will keep doing all they can in order to make more and more progress and to try and score their first points.
"We'll do our best, as ever [in Malaysia]. Now that all of the cars on the grid are so reliable it makes scoring points more and more difficult, but we shall try!" he concluded.
TYRES:
Bridgestone will take its hard and medium specification tyres to Malaysia, which will be the first time that the team will have used the latest Potenza rubber in genuinely hot conditions.
“From what we learnt from the Malaysia test, we are confident that both specifications can cope with the heat as there were no major issues encountered," head of track engineering operations Kees van de Grint reported, "Because we selected the two hardest compound tyres in our range, the hard lacks a little bit of grip on a green track, but that should be satisfactory with the expected improved track conditions during the GP itself. The medium compound had a good level of grip and sufficient wear life to allow for any sort of strategy.”
The ubiquitous 'extreme wet' tyre will also be on hand should the teams need it - a distinct possibility in the tropics.
“We had rain during the test and ran with both the wet and extreme wet tyres," van de Grint added, "One issue that often appears while running in the wet is to get temperature in the tyres but, as it rains ’hot water’ here, it was not difficult to get the tyres to the correct temperature. I am expecting the same solid performance from our wet weather tyres should we experience rain during the race.”
