JANUARY 12, 2006

Action in Spain

The Formula 1 teams are back in action in Spain with a variety of different specification cars and a few new colour schemes, most of them provisional. Recording the times set in the testing may or may not provide a sensible idea about who is competitive and who is not as the teams are all working on different development programmes and to a large extent are not keen to give away too many details of what they are up to. This has not stopped the inevitable headlines about Ferrari comebacks because on the first day of the test Michael Schumacher went quickest, at the wheel of an F2004 fitted with a Ferrari V8 engine, with a best lap of 1m18.020s. Second fastest was Ricardo Zonta in the Toyota TF106 who lapped the track in 1m19.348s. Among the others running were Fernando Alonso in a V10-engined R25 and Giancarlo Fisichella in the new R26, plus David Coulthard in the RB1. On the second day of running the times tumbled with Pedro de la Rosa lapping the track in his orange McLaren-Mercedes MP4-20B in 1m16.509s. Schumacher got the F2004 down to 1m17.970s. Zonta was next with a 1m18.541s. Also running was the Sauber C24 interim car with Nick Heidfeld driving the all-white machine. The team will reveal a new livery shortly. Williams was also present with its Cosworth-engined FW27C with Nico Rosberg and Alexander Wurz both driving. Honda had a pair of 007Bs for Anthony Davidson and James Rossiter while Gary Paffett was in action for McLaren, Tonio Liuzzi for Scuderia Toro Rosso (which is running the old Red Bull RB1s at the moment) while Coulthard continued work on the new RB2 for Red Bull Racing.