BMW top second day at Jerez
BMW Sauber topped their second day of testing at Jerez this week, with eight teams present today rather than the three that ran yesterday
Christian Klien was aboard the BMW today and set a best time of 1:19.537, just over three tenths quicker than Sebastian Vettel's best time in his first test for Red Bull Racing.
Klien covered nearly 400 kilometres, focusing mainly on aerodynamic upgrades for the remainder of the this season.
"A whole day's testing without any problems gave me the opportunity to provide the engineers with a lot of feedback on new components," said Klien.
"The new surface on parts of the track provides better grip and has smoothed out the bumps that were there before."
Robert Kubica was scheduled to take over for BMW tomorrow, but has been sidelined by an infected tooth, so Nick Heidfeld will complete the next two days of running for the team.
Vettel lost some time during the afternoon with a gearbox problem, but still finished the day in second place. He will continue testing with Red Bull tomorrow, before returning to Scuderia Toro Rosso for the final day of the test on Friday.
Red Bull's reserve driver Sebastien Buemi moved in the opposite direction to Vettel to test for Toro Rosso today as the team evaluate him in what the team called an audition for a race drive for 2009.
He finished the day third overall, four tenths off the pace of Vettel.
McLaren tested their KERS system for the first time today with Gary Paffett behind the wheel. He ran a simple check of the system, and also sampled some aero developments aimed at the final four races of the season, and finished the day fourth on the time sheet.
Pedro de la Rosa will take over testing duties for McLaren tomorrow.
Toyota, Renault, Honda, and Williams were also out on track today, with Williams and Kazuki Nakajima testing their 2009-spec rear end.
They ran an FW30 fitted with a rear wing and diffuser sized to the new dimensions, however the rest of the aero was to the current rules.
The 2009 rules demand the rear wing be just 800mm wide, but it is allowed to be deeper and placed higher up. While the new diffuser is lower, shorter, and moved further back.
Pos Driver Team Time Laps 1. Christian Klien BMW Sauber 1:19.537 84 2. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault 1:19.878 60 3. Sebastien Buemi Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:20.209 88 4. Gary Paffett McLaren-Mercedes 1:20.602 52 5. Kamui Kobayashi Toyota 1:20.769 94 6. Lucas di Grassi Renault 1:20.853 90 7. Alexander Wurz Honda 1:21.123 71 8. Kazuki Nakajima Williams 1:23.171 61
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