Gearbox issue sidelines Raikkonen

F1 Test, Barcelona, Circuit de Catalunya

Kimi Räikkönen concluded his second day of running at Barcelona with a gearbox problem keeping him off the track for much of the morning and part of the afternoon session at the Circuit de Catalunya. Whilst the team ultimately diagnosed and rectified the issue, vital running time was lost.

Once Kimi did get out on track, he immediately set the third fastest lap time, which is where he ended the day.

The test programme today for Lotus included systems checks, temperature monitoring, data correlation and assessment of the performance of the car with its initial aerodynamic package.

Kimi Räikkönen: “If yesterday wasn’t an ideal day then today was more of the same. Fortunately, once we were able to get a lap in we could see that the car has good pace. We test to find any problems so in that respect we’re doing a good job, but it’s frustrating. It’s no secret that we want to get more laps on the board and that’s the target for the rest of this test and the final sessions next week.”

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: “Our target was more laps today and we’ve missed that. We were able to diagnose a problem with the gearbox, but rectifying this took quite a lot of time. This severely affected our plans for the day but yet again we were able to show we have a quick car. On the positive side, there were no further problems with telemetry as we experienced yesterday and the second gearbox ran reliably in the afternoon. Tomorrow we will try to rack up the laps with evaluation work and a race distance simulation.”

Romain Grosjean will take the wheel of E21 chassis 02 for the next two days