Front wing failure forces Virgin to skip second day after just 11 laps

One of the newcomers for 2010 F1 grid Virgin Racing were forced to abandon their test on the second day after a front wing failure. The front wing fell off the car after driver Timo Glock had completed only 11 laps on the second day at the Jerez test. The problem had something to do with the mounting point for the front wings and Technical director Nick Wirth said the cause of the failure had been identified and that the team planned to continue work on Friday.

As we had reported, Glock’s time in his Virgin GP was over 10 seconds off the pace of Kobayashi who topped the timesheets on the second day. Glock had done three short runs when the problem occurred about an hour and a half into the second day of the four-day test.

Wirth said in a team statement: “This morning we experienced a front wing mounting problem which caused the wing to come off the car at the beginning of a run. The cause has already been identified. “Unfortunately, we’re missing one or two spare parts which will hopefully arrive this evening, so we won’t be able to run for the rest of the day.

“In the short amount of running that we’ve achieved so far, we are very encouraged by what we’ve seen and we have gathered some vital aero data which is very much in the range of what we were predicting. “We look forward to resuming the programme tomorrow morning.”

Virgin also managed only limited running on Wednesday, when the late arrival of new parts meant Glock did not go out on to the track until the afternoon. He managed only five laps before the team ended his work, saying they wanted to ensure the car was ready for a full day’s testing on Thursday.