2nd pre season test- Barcelona

 BARCELONA - 2nd pre season tests

The second pre season testing at Barcelona got completed. Again there's not much to infer from it. The first 3 days were dry and testing went on as usual, but the last day was plagued by rain. Here are the lap times for day1 of test 2:

1	Rosberg	Mercedes	1m22.616s
2	Raikkonen	Lotus	1m22.623s  +0.007
3	Alonso	Ferrari	1m22.952s  +0.336
4	Vettel	Red Bull	1m22.965s  +0.349
5	Maldonado	Williams	1m23.733s  +1.117

Vettel set the quickest lap time by lunch break, and went even quicker later on as he shaved a few fractions of his earlier set time. But he was quickly beaten by Rosberg who was on a flying lap. Raikkonen managed a few laps and missed out on P1 by 7 thousandths of a second! But that was good enough for him to beat Vettel to second, as his final laps were "just for fun". Kimi should race races just for fun too, and with a funny strategy! who knows? Maybe it'll work out!

Fernando Alonso who had a winter break longer than anybody else, finally got the first feel of his new F138. He managed a 3rd place in the last 15mins of the session, pushing Sebastian Vettel to fourth. 

The newly launched Williams aided the defending winner of this race, Pastor Maldonado a 5th place.'

These are the laptimes on day two:

1  Perez McLaren  1m21.848s 2  Vettel Red Bull  1m22.197s  +0.349 3  Raikkonen Lotus  1m22.697s  +0.849 4  Hamilton Mercedes  1m22.726s  +0.878 5  Alonso Ferrari  1m23.247s  +1.399

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Once again, the RB9 driven by Sebastian Vettel set the fastest laptime by lunch and was later beaten by Sergio Perez in the last 45 minutes.

 

Day three:

1	Alonso	Ferrari	1m21.875s
2	Hulkenberg	Sauber	1m22.160s  +0.285
3	Grosjean	Lotus	1m22.188s  +0.313
4	Rosberg	Mercedes	1m22.611s  +0.736
5	Maldonado	Williams	1m22.675s  +0.800

Alonso finally puts it all together and puts the Ferrari in P1 on his final day of testing. Nico Hulkenberg in the top3 laptimes! that’s a good signs that says “Yeah, I like the car and I can work with it”, wins or podiums, Nico? Romain Grosjean, definitely a good driver, if he can control his hunger to cash onto others this year, he can make it all work. Rosberg has looked good with his car all test. So no surprises really. Maldonado beating his rookie teammate Valtteri Bottas to 5^th place. What we all were wondering is, where did the McLaren and Redbull go? Mark Webber is down in P9, while on the first 2 days of testing, Sebastian Vettel did lap times nearly a second quicker than his time.  Jenson Button was in P7.

As I said, Day 4 testing was done under wet conditions, and so you really cant call it testing. It was just a couple of laps for fun, I suppose?  

1	Hamilton	Mercedes	1m23.282s
2	Button	McLaren	1m23.633s  +0.351
3	Vergne	Toro Rosso	1m24.071s  +0.789
4	Bianchi	Force India	1m25.732s  +2.450
5	Gutierrez	Sauber	1m26.239s  +2.957

So that’s the second test for you, soon within another week we’ll be prepping for the 3^rd and final pre season test at Barcelona where hopefully  with normal track conditions, we’ll see what the new Pirelli tyres are capable of, And of course what the cars are can do too, ‘cause the next stop after that is Station Melbourne, where the first race of 2013 world championship will kick off.