Michael Schumacher returns to the Race
Morning Report
Felipe Massa recorded the fastest lap time in this morning's session
Sebastien Buemi officially kicked off the pre-season multi-team testing days when he drove his Toro Rosso out of the pit lane at Valencia's Circuit Ricardo Tormo shortly after the track opened at 10 am on Monday, February 1, 2010. The Toro Rosso team had worked late into the previous night putting the finishing touches on the car.
Felipe Massa was next out in the Ferrari, followed by Gary Paffett driving the McLaren, Rubens Barrichello in the Williams and Pedro de la Rosa in his BMW Sauber. Massa was the first to complete a flying lap and clocked the fastest time - 1:13.088 - halfway through the day. Lap times and fuel loads will differ considerably during this and all the upcoming test days.
In all, seven teams are in Valencia. Paffett, ironically the only test driver who is scheduled to appear, is handling the shakedown duties for McLaren today.
As for the rest, de la Rosa is driving the Sauber BMW; Robert Kubica is in the Renault; Barrichello is behind the wheel of the Williams; Buemi is Toro Rosso's designated driver; Massa is in the Ferrari.
Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher are splitting the shakedown work on the Mercedes today, with Rosberg running in the morning. Although Mercedes had shown its new W01 to the media earlier in the morning, the car was not ready to run until 35 minutes into the session.
This morning the drivers were doing short runs punctuated by long stops in the pits for the cars to be checked over.
"The main target here is to check all the systems," said BMW Sauber's technical director Willy Rampf. "We want to get an overall picture about the car, and where we are regarding weight distribution, for example, because this will be one of the main issues this season. And then we will feed that information back so that in the next tests we can work on set-ups and preparing everything."
Buemi may have been the first out, but after two and a half hours he had only completed five laps. Toro Rosso was having teething problems with its new car, but the team said they had anticipated that.
"I am expecting mistakes because a young team makes mistakes, and this is why we are here early," said technical director Giorgio Ascanelli. "I tried to get the car on the ground as soon as I could so that we would have time to react to the glitches and the problems that for sure we are going to get."
The weather cooperated with it being sunny throughout the day and the air temperature climbing to 13 degrees Centigrade.
Dan Knutson
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