Small gremlins force Red Bull to stop twice

F1 Test, Barcelona, Circuit de Catalunya

The second day of testing at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya was a mixed bag for Infiniti Red Bull Racing as Sebastian Vettel claimed P2 on the timesheet, but the team was forced to end its programme early when Sebastian had to stop on track late in the afternoon.

“We had some issues with reliability today and we couldn’t do as many laps as we wanted, but I think it’s better that this kind of thing happens today rather than in Australia,” Sebastian Vettel said. “It was nothing disastrous, just small things that hampered us today. We stopped the car once as we saw a small loss of pressure. The second stop towards the end of the day caused a red flag and it simply took too much time to turn everything around, so we couldn’t get out again.”

Race Engineering Co-ordinator Andy Damerum said: “The stops we had today weren’t too serious and we’ll have everything sorted for tomorrow. We know where the issues are. However, though we would obviously much rather have had a smooth run today we still accomplished a lot and even managed to slot in some more test items in the afternoon, which we put on the car at lunch time. So, while it wasn’t an ideal day, we did get through most of what we wanted to. Seb now makes way for Mark tomorrow.”