Jerez: Webber is the quickest of the quick

Re-published from Planet F1Mark Webber set a blistering pace on Friday where, thanks to a day of sunshine, he posted this year’s fastest lap time at the Jerez circuit. After finishing top of the timesheets with a lap of 1:19.299, the Aussie reported: “We’re certainly showing some good form in terms of reliability, but we always need to work on performance – you never know what the other teams are doing. “But we’re in a good position at the moment to build up to the first race. “It’s close, but there’s also quite a way to go, as other teams have no doubt planned developments for Bahrain. “We’re doing the work we need to do in order to understand the car more.” Report: After two days of rain and interruptions, Friday’s running at the Spanish circuit kicked off under blue skies and with the track almost completely dry. However, even the dry surface didn’t stop the red flags from being waved as the action was halted on six occasions. Heikki Kovalainen brought out the first red flag in the opening hour when the Lotus driver came to halt at Turn 9 with the team reporting that the “car stopped with a clutch sensor failure.” Lotus, though, were the only newcomers to run into problems as Virgin Racing, having a great start to the day, soon found themselves beached in the gravel. Lucas di Grassi, who took over from team-mate Timo Glock for the final two days of testing, put in a respectable 1:31.6, which had the team crowing about that great “Friday feeling!” Five minutes later, di Grassi’s VR01 was in the gravel and the red flags were once again being waved. No soon had the action started than it stopped again, this time it was Kamui Kobayashi, who came to a halt out on track on his very first lap out of the pits. “A festival of red flags so far,” is how Ferrari described the first few hours of testing. And hour of clear running on an ever-drying track followed, allowing Jenson Button, Mark Webber and Fernando Alonso to put in some blistering laps as the trio moved ever closer to last week’s leading time of 1:19.583, which was set by Lewis Hamilton. Their charge, though, came to an end when Webber’s RB6 broke down between Turns 8 and 9, red flag number four of the day. The…

Posted by admin 19 February 2010

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