“This was a good last day of testing,” chief test engineer Christian Silk said. “When we arrived in Barcelona, our main aim was to understand how to run the car, in collaboration with our new partner
Bridgestone. We achieved that, which is very positive. The whole team put in a lot of effort this week, working late into the night to prepare the cars and analyse the data. And I think the progress we have made over the three days shows the effort was worth it. We will now continue in the same direction, and we hope to have made solid progress by the team we conclude testing before Christmas.”
The ninth quickest time went the way of a driver making his return to
Formula One machinery as German
Timo Glock took over from his countryman
Nick Heidfeld in the second
BMW Sauber. The former Jordan driver completed over 100 trouble free laps although he admitted it had taken him some time to adapt from the GP2 car he has raced for the past season.
“The characteristics of an
F1 car are quite different from a GP2, so it took me some laps in the morning to adapt my driving style,” he said. “It's a fantastic feeling to drive this car. Particularly in the fast corners the speed is really impressive. I did many laps today and was able to improve constantly, so I'm really happy, and I'm looking forward to my next test in
Jerez.
Behind Glock, Christian Klien completed his second day of running as a
Honda driver as the former
Red Bull man worked through a similar programme to team-mate Barrichello. Having has more time to get used to his surroundings in the RA106, Klien was a busy man on Thursday – only Kovalainen and Barrichello bettering his tally of 116 laps during the day.
