Spyker's B-spec only gets two days of testing before first race
The new Etihad Aldar Spyker Formula One Team’s B-spec challenger racked up more miles on its second test day at the Autodromo di Monza, Italy. Sakon Yamamoto, participating in his first-ever test session for the team, put in 415km despite the torrential rain and thunderstorms that hit the circuit in the morning. Over the course of the test, the new car has now completed over 850km, just shy of three race distances.
The team’s running was limited in the morning as rain lashed the track, but as the storms abated around 13:00, began its programme of long runs, tyre comparisons and working on set-ups for the forthcoming race.
The team will now return to its Silverstone base and will not participate in the extended test day tomorrow.
Dominic Harlow, chief race and test engineer "A huge thunderstorm greeted the team this morning as we arrived at the circuit and it rained almost continuously until 13:00 when the skies began to clear and the track slowly dried. Despite this weather limiting running to the afternoon session only, a useful 72 laps were completed with Sakon and the team working incredibly hard to complete this impressive total. Of course with the limited time we concentrated on the fundamentals of race set-up and tyre comparison, along with a fix for the problem that affected both car's pitstops in Turkey last week."
Sakon Yamamoto "Today was a strange day as it was torrential rain and thunder in the morning and we couldn’t do any running at all. Obviously it’s a bit disappointing as we wanted to put more mileage on the car, but when the rain stopped we were able to do some good longer runs. Considering how much it rained, we did do quite a lot of laps and I was happy with the progress we made. It’s difficult to compare the A and B-spec cars as the tracks are so different – Istanbul is very high downforce, while Monza is very low – but the car felt easier to drive. Overall, it was good preparation for next week and we got some good settings for the race."
