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19 February
2010 @ 18:00 GMT - Charles Cooper
Day three of this
week's test saw Lucas di Grassi back in the VR-01 for Virgin Racing.
Finally the wet weather in Jerez subsided, however no sooner had the
team embarked on an intensive list of testing items than an earlier
hydraulic issue resurfaced and the team were forced to spend much of
the day troubleshooting the problem in the garage rather than making
the most of this opportunity for much-needed dry track time. Lucas
completed just 34 laps and as a result he ended the day 10th out of
the 11 cars on track today.
Nick Wirth,
Technical Director of Virgin Racing, commented: "After being
delayed by a small spin this morning on a drying track, we ran
through some critical race-related procedures which we haven't had
time to get to so far during testing. Once the track had completely
dried, we started our performance work but we were again frustrated
by a reoccurrence of one of our known hydraulic issues. This stopped
Lucas from doing more than a handful of flying laps and then finally
prevented any more meaningful running, so he didn't get up to speed
today. The hydraulic issue caught us out on the first day of this
test and since Wednesday we've been forced to run conservatively
until a new solution is available for the Barcelona test. We'll try
and put some more fixes in place tonight to allow us to get some more
laps in tomorrow. We're very aware that Lucas has had very little
running so far and we hope to improve things so he can get more seat
time at the Barcelona test next week." |