Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo has been pleased at completing a race simulation on the second day of the second test at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
The team bounced back from Daniil Kvyat’s brake troubles on yesterday morning to have an uninterrupted day of running, completing 135 laps. The Australian set a lap time of 1:25.235 to go sixth fastest in the twelve-man line-up, two seconds behind Williams’ session leader Valtteri Bottas.
After the session, Ricciardo described how he is further preparing both body and car for the upcoming season: “Quite a lot of laps today. Obviously, we did a race simulation, which was definitely on the to-do list and I’m glad we got through it successfully. It was important to do that today and also important for me to do the laps to see how my body feels and it was positive on both sides. The car feels very decent.”
However, as many drivers have commented, the weather conditions near the end of the day made the final laps a bit tougher for those on track: “The last half hour on track the wind picked up a bit and the sun got a bit lower so that made it a bit more challenging but otherwise a pretty good run today.”
Guillaume Rocquelin, the team’s Head of Race Engineering, also spoke of the preparations continuing for the team: “A very busy day for the whole team out here today. In the morning we did a lot of pit stop practice, all of which went very smoothly. We also built some aero mapping and normal running into the morning session, which was productive.
“In the afternoon, we moved across to race simulation. I don’t think we were alone in that, as plenty of teams were out there working through race programmes and I’m happy to say that ours went well. We got through 135 laps today, the most we’ve done in a single day at these tests so far and we didn’t encounter any problems.
“We are hoping to run through a similar programme with Dany for tomorrow when he takes over the driving again.”
Kvyat takes over the reins tomorrow before Ricciardo is expected to set the final testing laps for the team on Friday in preparation for heading to his home race in Melbourne.
