Oliver White
The second day of running in the second test session at Bahrain’s Sakhir circuit saw Felipe Massa again dominate the proceedings by going fastest and beating Lewis Hamilton of McLaren by a whopping 0.5s. A country mile in Formula One terms. Felipe was running with a new aerodynamic package on his F2007, and Massa convincingly charged ahead of his team mate Kimi Raikkonen who ended the day in third. The Ferrari duo clocked up 192 laps between them, compared McLaren’s 107 with Hamilton and test driver Pedro De La Rosa, who finished in fifth.
Renault were back in action with both drivers running. The Anglo-French team remarkably managed to rebuild Heikki Kovalainen’s chassis after his almighty smash yesterday. The Finn completed 29 laps having not started until halfway through the day, but he is clearly showing no ill-effects from his accident as he finished just 0.1s behind his team mate Giancarlo Fisichella, who tallied 107 laps for the day.
BMW looked less strong today, with Nick Heidfeld in seventh and Robert Kubica in tenth. Kubica suffered mechanical problems, namely an oil leak, and his running was therefore limited to just 52 laps. Honda returned with both race drivers today following their launch in London earlier in the week. Jenson Button clocked the eighth fastest lap of the day while Rubens Barrichello finished in eleventh.
Red Bull, Toyota and Super Aguri continue to hog the bottom rows of the timing sheet once again, with Jarno Trulli finishing dead last and 2.7s adrift of Massa’s pace. The only real surprise from the back runners was Vitantonio Liuzzi’s lap time of 1m32.648s which saw his Toro Rosso end up in ninth for the day, comfortably beating both Red Bulls of David Coulthard and Mark Webber.
1. Massa – Ferrari – 1m30.640s
2. Hamilton – McLaren – 1m31.178s
3. Raikkonen – Ferrari – 1m31.490s
4. Fisichella – Renault – 1m31.967s
5. De La Rosa – McLaren – 1m31.971s
6. Kovalainen – Renault – 1m32.068s
7. Heidfeld – BMW – 1m32.254s
8. Button – Honda – 1m32.293s
9. Liuzzi – Toro Rosso – 1m32.359s
10. Kubica – BMW – 1m32.648s
11. Barrichello – Honda – 1m32.650s
12. Sato – Super Aguri – 1m32.837s
13. Schumacher – Toyota – 1m33.054s
14. Coulthard – Red Bull Racing – 1m33.146s
15. Webber – Red Bull Racing – 1m33.238s
16. Trulli – Toyota – 1m33.384s
clearly rbr are sandbagging then. if a team with the same chassis, similar engine but only half the experience can beat them. i put webber somewhere just in front of the bmw’s.
what say you?
What say I? I don’t normally go with sandbagging theories. Sure, some teams have done it in the past, but I just don’t get why. Publicity, maybe, but I cannot see any logical reason why a team that is supposed to be testing a new car would purposely slow down to avoid setting normal lap times. I believe Red Bull are in trouble. And I believe Liuzzi’s lap was just a great lap. I think Red Bull will be strong in the latter half of the season because they are building a strong team, but currently I don’t see how they’re going to make much of an impression in Australia, aside from their glamorous girls and snazzy motorhomes. Remember, STR did beat RB on more than one occasion last year. Reminds of that B-Team post…