Was Jenson Button’s first McLaren test good or bad news for the reigning F1 champion?

Formula 1 teams up and down the grid were back at base yesterday preparing for more action in Jerez while digesting events at the three-day first test in Valencia. And for some there is much to think about – none less than Jenson Button. After his first full day in a McLaren as the defending champion he will be under no illusions of the scale of the task ahead of him. He had a difficult baptism, that’s for sure. He was up until 1am the night before his first outing trying to get the cockpit right and had the bags under his eyes to prove it. Not that he was complaining. And then he lost precious hours of track time fiddling with the minutiae of his cockpit. Those at the team that I spoke to were pretty relaxed about it all. They said that regardless of the theoretical time you spend in a mock up it is not until you get out on the track that you get a real idea of what’s what. Some alluded to the fact the two drivers are very different builds, and Jenson’s seven centimetres height difference to Lewis was a factor. Luckily for Jenson though he has a long body and short legs so making the various alterations was, they said, easier than it could have been. Had it been vice versa then things could have been a great deal more complicated. Though it is a 200mph race machine – a lump of kevlar, carbon fibre and various exotic metal mixes – it has to meld to his body and ultimately feel like a second skin if he is to get the best out of it. The tinkering amounted to what David Coulthard yesterday called “house-keeping”. The changes may have been small but the effect certainly was not. It was day one against Lewis Hamilton and whatever he says Jenson would have loved to have fired a shot across his bows with a blistering time to make everyone sit up and look. That’s what Fernando Alonso did at the other end of the paddock, even though he complained of the same comfort problems as Jense. He climbed in the flame red Ferrari and made nonsense of Felipe Massa’s best time the previous day. And he did it in a couple of dozen laps. The little Brazilian had covered a couple of hundred laps…

Read Article @ Lewis Hamilton News

Posted by admin 5 February 2010

Post A Comment