Engine problem cuts day short for Marussia
Day Two of the opening pre-season test got underway at the Circuito de Jerez today, with Marussia announcing Luiz Razia as its second driver for the 2013 season. It was straight down to business for him as he jumped into the new MR02 for the first day of his testing programme.
The early part of the morning was given over to acclimatisation but it wasn’t long before Luiz was making good progress and we were able to start pushing through the list of test items. Just before the lunch break an engine problem arose and though we pushed hard through the rest of the afternoon to get the car back on track, a red flag towards the end of the session meant that they were unable to go out and put further mileage on the car.
Luiz Razia:
“It has been a very busy but happy day for me with, first, the announcement of my drive for the Team and then getting straight into the car for a first day of testing. It is not the first time I have worked with the Team of course, but there has been a lot to take in and I need to get up to speed very quickly. I’m quite pleased with the way things have gone for me, so it is a shame that we were unable to run this afternoon. We had an engine problem but took that opportunity to do our KERS checks and then we were unable to turn the car round before the red flag came out. Overall though I think we have good reason to be positive as the guys are obviously pushing extremely hard. I’m looking forward to being in the car again on Friday but for now today is a moment I will savour because I have worked hard and waited a long time for it.”
John Booth, Team Principal, Marussia F1 Team:
“After the issue we encountered yesterday, we had a lot of hard work to do last night to rebuild the car. We were forced to effect some substantial repairs at the track, but the race team and factory worked hard to get the required new components out here quickly and we were ahead of where we thought we would be once this morning came around. Luiz has settled in well and he got off to a good start, aided by the fact that he is well-versed in all the procedures required to operate F1 machinery following his experiences at the recent rookie tests. We made good progress with the KERS this morning and the team and drivers are now getting to grips with the system. In the coming days, this will allow us to focus on other areas. There are a lot of new systems on the car and some of these are quite challenging for the Team, but we will get to grips with these by the time we complete this test and on the whole we are making good progress. We were forced to stop at lunchtime due to an engine problem, and after fighting to get back out on track before the end of the session, the red flag conspired against us. Tomorrow is a new day and we are determined to get up and running and put some further mileage on the car.”
