It was the under-fire
Ralf Schumacher who topped the timesheets on the first day of testing at
Silverstone, with the German outpacing 2007 pace-setters
McLaren as the rumours he is on the verge of losing his seat at
Toyota gather pace.
The day was punctuated by red flags as
Mark Webber, Luca Badoer,
Nick Heidfeld and Vitantonio Liuzzi all suffered mechanical woes that forced them to stop on-track and
Kazuki Nakajima spun at Brooklands, damaging his
Williams' front wing. Schumacher ended proceedings just over a tenth of a second clear of McLaren test-driver Pedro de la Rosa after working on tyre comparisons. Team-mate
Jarno Trulli is set to take over at the wheel from Wednesday.
“In general it was a successful day,” Schumacher said afterwards, “and we made it through everything we had planned. We were concentrating on set-up work, primarily targeted at the British Grand Prix. We also looked at some different aero settings and did some qualifying runs.
“The conditions were very good, particularly in the morning, although the wind picked up in the afternoon. We had one stoppage after lunch while we changed some suspension settings but overall things went well.”
De la Rosa covered almost 100 laps of the Northamptonshire circuit as he focused on engineering and set-up work on the MP4-22 in preparation for the British Grand Prix in just under three weeks' time. Both
Fernando Alonso and
Lewis Hamilton are expected to be in action for the Woking outfit over the remainder of the three-day test.
Red Bull Racing star Webber was third-fastest on the back of his maiden points of the campaign in the US Grand Prix last weekend, with
Heikki Kovalainen – who has seen his debut season come alive in the two transatlantic races – just behind after concentrating on set-up and aerodynamic work and tyre comparisons. The Finn will be joined by
Renault test-driver Nelson Piquet Jnr on Wednesday.
