Jerez day1 – Rosberg fastest on a rainy track

Mercedes Benz set the pace on the first day at Jerez. Nico Rosberg’s 1:20.927 remained unbeaten throughout the day. This is the second officialF1 test after Valencia. See the time sheets of Valencia day1,day2 day3. While Ferrari dominated Valencia, they were slightly off the pace at Jerez possibly because they were conducting reliability testing.

The times shown below dont actually give us a clear picture. The track was dry only in the first hour of the test anf once it started raining, teams opted to send their cars out only for short runs. Moreover, the variation in wetness also meant that the times were less meaningful than on normal conditions.

However, McLaren caught the attention by running several ungainly wind flow sensors and probes early on. “We feel it’s necessary to put as much emphasis as we possibly can on accurately measuring the flow structures we encounter at the track so that we can match them to the flow structures we are able to simulate in CFD,” a team spokesman explained.

Virgin Racing became the first new F1 team to run at an official test session, albeit with driver Timo Glock initially completing only one shakedown lap before returning to the pits, and then runninga brief three lap stint in the wet.

In their first ever test, Vitantonio Liuzzi of Force India managed a decent time of 1:24.968s.

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Times:

1 Rosberg (Mercedes) 1m20.927s

2 Buemi (Toro Rosso) 1m21.031s +0.104

3 Hulkenberg (Williams) 1m22.243s +1.316

4 Alonso (Ferrari) 1m22.895s +1.968

5 Kobayashi (Sauber) 1m23.787s +2.860

6 Button (McLaren) 1m24.947s +4.020

7 Liuzzi (Force India) 1m24.968s +4.041

8 Petrov (Renault) 1m25.440s +4.513

9 Webber (Red Bull) 1m26.502s +5.575

10 Glock (Virgin) 1m38.734s +17.807