Webber pleased with improving reliability levels
After torrential rain and lightening storms last night in Jerez (which saw the police resorting to boats on some local roads), there was bright sunshine today. Mark Webber was back driving the RB6 and began the day on extreme wet tyres, as conditions remained damp from overnight rain. He then switched to intermediate tyres and by 1100hrs was running on dry tyres.
Car: RB6 – 01
Laps: 115
Best time: 1:19.299
Circuit length: 4.423 km
A small mechanical issue early afternoon cost the team around two hours of running time, but Mark was able to get back out on track with plenty of time remaining and completed a series of short and long runs to test various chassis set-ups and analyse tyre degradation.
At the end of the session, Ian Morgan, Head of Race Engineering, said “It’s good to finally get some dry conditions and complete some proper runs on dry tyres, which we’ve done very little of with this car so far. We did 115 laps today, which is pretty good; things look promising.”
Mark Webber said: “We’re certainly showing some good form in terms of reliability, but we always need to work on performance; you never know that the other teams are doing. We’re in a good position at the moment to build up to the first race – it’s close, but there’s also quite a way to go, as other teams have no doubt planned developments for Bahrain. We’re doing the work we need to do, in order to understand the car more.”
Mark Webber will be back in the car tomorrow for the final day of this test.