Red Bull Racing satisfied about test day 2: “According to plan”

Published on 01 March 2017 by Julien Lemmen

After a pretty disappointing opening day of testing at Barcelona, the second day was a lot more positive for Red Bull Racing. Max Verstappen did 89 laps around the Circuito de Catalunya and posted the 3rd fastest time. Head of Race Engineering Guillaume Rocquelin commented after the session: “After clearing the niggles we had yesterday, today went very much according to plan. We were a little tentative in the morning as it was pretty chilly and a few people were sliding around a bit. Because of that we focused on short runs and aero mapping. We then had a pretty long stop over lunch to make some changes to the car in preparation for what we wanted to achieve this afternoon. We knew it would mean taking a hit in terms of track time but we were willing to do that in order to get the information we wanted. And we did that. It’s an interesting process this year."

Rocquelin furthermore elaborates on the challenges the new regulation bring: "Obviously, the new cars behave quite differently to the last generation and therefore you can only draw so much on historical reference. As such these first couple of days are really about establishing a platform of understanding and once you have that you can really start to build from there. It’s also been very interesting to work with the new tyres. The deg is good; they’re consistent, they’re a good step I think.”