“[It was] another good day with lots of mileage for the car and myself,” the 22-year-old commented. “The more I drive the car, the happier I feel, and it's all good preparation for the first race. The car ran well today and we did not have any problems, which meant we could do a race distance in the afternoon.”
Piquet was joined in
Jerez by test driver, countryman and fellow ex-GP2 ace Lucas di Grassi, who clearly enjoyed his first taste of the Enstone-based outfit's new mount. The 23-year-old spent the morning carrying out performance tests as he familiarised himself with the car, before he too completed some longer runs.
“It's my first time driving a
Formula 1 car on a proper track,” di Grassi enthused after clocking the 13th-quickest time, “and for sure the car feels really good and it was a really impressive experience. I'm really happy with my day.
“We did a lot of laps, the pace was consistent and I felt comfortable with the team and the car. We did one long run in the afternoon which went well, and I'm looking forward to working with the team later this week.”
“The two main objectives of the programme were to complete a race distance with Nelson and to get Lucas comfortable in the car as he had not run an R28 on a full circuit test before,” added chief test engineer Christian Silk. “Both these were completed without any problems and both cars enjoyed a trouble-free day.
“Nelson did a bit of performance work in the morning, improving the set-up of the car, and completed a race distance in the afternoon without any major issue, so that was a good day for us.”
Red Bull Racing – which like
Williams had arrived at the circuit a day earlier – had
Mark Webber seventh and
David Coulthard tenth in the Milton Keynes-based outfit's two shark-like RB4s, though with less than two tenths of a second between the pair. The Australian spent his time working on mechanical set-up and his Scottish team-mate aerodymnamic development, as the duo completed more than 100 laps apiece on day two of RBR's penultimate outing before the new season gets underway.
