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Jerez - Test 3 -Day 2 - Virgin Racing
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18 February
2010 @ 19:20 GMT - Charles Cooper Virgin Racing experienced an altogether more productive day in Jerez today. The team completed an encouraging 72 laps with Timo Glock posting the 8th fastest time of the 12 cars on track. While the team’s fortunes took a turn for the better, the weather still hasn’t and the rain looks likely to continue for much of the remaining two days of crucial pre-season testing. Tomorrow it’s Lucas di Grassi’s turn in the VR-01. Nick Wirth, Virgin Racing Technical Director, commented: “After a great overnight effort from the Virgin Racing team, we managed to complete more than a race distance today, which is very satisfying after our frustrations of yesterday. We also managed to prove out some development parts which gave results completely in line with the performance prediction from the development programme at Wirth Research. This is always satisfying as it gives the team and drivers a great and confidence-inspiring introduction to our development program for this car. We continue to work around the clock to fix issues as they arise, and we’re looking forward to Lucas’s comments on the car’s progress tomorrow.” |
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Day 1
Virgin Racing were trackside in Jerez today where the team’s second full test with the VR-01 got underway. After a successful conclusion to its testing debut here last week, the team experienced more of the rough than the smooth today when an elusive hydraulics problem proved hard to pin down. After dodging the wet running that is starting to dominate pre-season testing, the team were forced to spend the afternoon in diagnostic mode conducting a series of out-laps to try to flush out the root cause through the hydraulic system. As a result, the team completed just 10 laps of the 4.5km circuit and were unable to set a representative lap time.
Nick Wirth, Technical Director of Virgin Racing, commented: “We have experienced a sequence of hydraulic problems which were tricky to diagnose on a new car. This caused us to suffer long and frustrating periods confined to the garage and when we did venture out on track it was purely to conduct a series of exploratory out-laps to try to understand if we had cured the problem. We eventually discovered the real issue, albeit rather late in the day. Nonetheless, having fully identified the problem, we can fix it tonight and look forward to what we hope will be a more constructive day of running for Timo and the team tomorrow.”