MARCH 1, 2012

Grosjean tops day in Barcelona

Lotus showed no signs of harm from missing last week's Barcelona test due to a suspension-mounting problem as Romain Grojean proved quickest on the opening day of the final Barcelona test.

Lotus showed no signs of harm from missing last week's Barcelona test due to a suspension-mounting problem as Romain Grojean (1:23.252) proved quickest on the opening day of the final Barcelona test.

"Now we have to work twice as hard to get back those days and hopefully the car will be good straight from the beginning," Grosjean said. Okay, we missed a bit of running but it is not as bad as we could have expected."

The four-day test in Spain is the last opportunity for teams to work on new cars before they are freighted to Australia for the first round of the championship on March 18.

Second fastest was Jenson Button (1:23.501) with the McLaren MP4-27. The team is planning on gradually introducing a suite of new components with focus for the opening two days primarily on pitstop practice with a full race crew and further race prove-outs - including some more time-consuming set-up work.

In the latter part of the test McLaren will focus on the Australian GP aerodynamic package.

Team manager Dave Redding said: "Having completed more than 2000km at Barcelona last week, today was always going to be more about quality than quantity. We wanted to drill a little deeper into our understanding of the car, and that meant undertaking some bigger set-up changes that wouldn't ordinarily be available to us during a grand prix weekend. We made good progress and we're satisfied with today's results."

Sergio Perez (1:23.820) was three tenths slower with the new Sauber, which lapped a hundredth quicker than Mark Webber in the Red Bull RB8. P©rez evaluated aero components and did mechanical set-up work, using only medium (which included some Pirelli experimental rubber) and hard compound tyres.

Webber did short runs in the morning and longer runs in the afternoon. Despite many feeling that the defending champions are in strong shape, Webber says there is still work to be done.

"It's starting to build up for the first race and we're pretty excited for that," he said. "However, we still have plenty to go through this week but so far so good. We certainly have a few more boxes to tick. We have some crucial data to gather this week and the next three days will be really important.

"We're learning every run and are making progress I think. You need to get your priorities right. That's where experience comes in and we have plenty of that. There aren't enough hours in the day at the moment, though I'm sure we're not the only team feeling that!"

Nico Rosberg (1:23.992) was mileage king for the day with the Mercedes W03, completing no fewer than 128 laps, just four short of two Spanish GP race distances.

"It was good to get the mileage on the car," Rosberg said. "We are making progress, but we don't know really where we are compared to the others. It will be interesting to find out at the first race."

Jean-Eric Vergne (1:24.216) did the first day for Toro Rosso and finished the day fractionally quicker than Paul Di Resta (1:24.305) in the Force India VJM05.

Force India chief engineer Jakob Andreasen said: "Paul covered just shy of 100 laps without any significant issues. The priority was to shake down the second chassis, which we ran for the first time today, and that went smoothly with no issues.

"As the first race in Melbourne approaches, there are more developments arriving at the track and our task this week is to evaluate as much as we can. The first of those were on the car today, so we carried out some aero passes and had some encouraging feedback from Paul."

Felipe Massa (1:24.318) put another 105 laps on Ferrari's F2012 and finished the day half a second up on Vitaly Petrov (1:24.876), who subbed for Heikki Kovalainen at Caterham. The Finn has a bout of food poisoning but hopes to be back on duty tomorrow.

Pastor Maldonado's Williams lapped in 1:25.587 but there was no sign of HRT or Marussia. The Spanish squad hopes to run its new car on Sunday, while Marussia will miss the test after failing one of the mandatory crash tests.