Hamilton confident of competitive package
For the second day of testing at Barcelona, Lewis Hamilton was back in the car for McLaren, but eventually could not run as much as he wanted. The Briton is however confident the McLaren is a good car that will be competitive at the first race of the season.
When early-morning fog kept the circuit closed, the team continued rehearsing full-race-crew pitstops in the pitlane.
"However, the majority of the day was spent making lengthy adjustments to set-up in order to more fully understand the effects of change on the car. This meant the day was centred more around development, and less on headline-making laptimes."
The day also saw the expected conclusion of the evaluation of the team's launch-spec aero package. For Saturday and Sunday, McLaren plans to introduce a suite of new components for evaluation ahead of the opening race in Australia in a fortnight’s time.
At the end of the day, a satisfied Lewis Hamilton said:
“Today was all about testing set-up. It was a good day: we learned quite a lot and improved a few things. We didn’t get a lot of mileage, as we had a lot of downtime inbetween changes.
“Our car feels better set-up wise, we still haven’t added the new aero package – so I think we’ll get a better picture of what the car will be like in Australia over the next two days. But I definitely feel like we have a competitive car.
“This year’s winter testing has been way better than last year. I’ve not had any problems, we’ve ironed out a lot of issues and I feel very comfortable. I’m fit and ready for Melbourne.”
Track length: 4.655km
Weather: Foggy and overcast at dawn, clearing by mid-morning to remain warm and sunny for the rest of the day. Maximum ambient temperature 18.9°C, maximum track temperature 37.2°C
Laps completed: 65
Kilometres covered: 303km
Best laptime: 1m24.111s at 12:50
