Mercedes GP driver Nico Rosberg dominates final day of Barcelona pre-season test – Formula 1 news
Mercedes GP’s Nico Rosberg dominated the final day of the Barcelona pre-season test session and clocked a best time of 1 minute and 43.814 seconds under heavy rain.
The five-day Formula 1 Barcelona test session that started on Tuesday, March 8, 2011 entered its final day. Four Formula 1 teams, including Mercedes GP, Ferrari, Williams and McLaren ended the test session while the remaining teams finished their testing
days on March 11, 2011 according to re-scheduled dates.
In the fourth day of session, Schumacher posted the quickest time of the day on timesheets however Rosberg retained his team position on the final day. He completed 35 laps in the afternoon, because the morning weather conditions were slightly unfavourable
for racing.
At the end of the session, the German told the media, “It was tricky out there today; there wasn't a lot of grip, but it was really useful to get the experience on the Pirelli wet tyres. We have made a lot of progress over the four tests this winter and
it's really nice to see that things are going in the right direction. We are on the up for sure, and all credit to the team for getting the upgrades on the car and, most importantly, to see that they are working as expected.”
Rosberg was followed closely by Pastor Maldonado of Williams, who clocked 1 minute and 44.333 seconds and managed to complete 23 laps, in his new FW33 car.
William’s technical director Sam Michael said, “Today was a complete washout in Barcelona! It's always useful to run in the wet, but it was too much unfortunately. Regardless, we've put some useful mileage on the FW33 at this final test, highlighted a few
areas to work on from a reliability and performance perspective, and now we're all really looking forward to start racing again.”
In third position was Lewis Hamilton of team McLaren, with a best time of 1 minute and 44.560 seconds. He completed 33 laps over the session and said that they learned a lot during short stints on the Pirelli tyres.
Both Michael Schumacher of Mercedes GP and Fernando Alonso of Ferrari completed only 5 laps due to the poor weather conditions during the session.
Formula 1 Hispania Racing Team were also present at the track, but were unable to test their new F111 car in the session. They will now formally test their 2011 car in the Australian Grand Prix, which will take place on March 27, 2011 in Melbourne.
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