Jerez day 4: Raikkonen sets the pace

The Lotus E21 has finished the fourth, and last, day of testing fastest. However this time, Kimi Räikkönen was in the cockpit. The Finn’s best time came in a short stint in the afternoon, on the soft Pirelli tyres. With the Lotus topping the timing charts on two of the four days, their season looks promising.

“We continued our work from yesterday and made some good progress. We’re at the top of the timing monitors, but that means nothing in testing. Our focus has been testing parts on the car, but I’ve been able to get the set-up more to my liking. For sure there’s more work to be done in this area, but that’s what we’re here for. The car feels strong and we seem to have a good idea of where we’re going with improvements,” said Räikkönen.

With Force India still looking for a driver to fill the second seat, Jules Bianchi increased his chances by going second fastest in the VJM06. He said, “My first experience of the new car was very positive and it’s clearly an improvement over last year’s car. I spent most of the time on the medium tyres, but I got a chance to run the softs as well and they offered a lot of grip so I enjoyed that.”

“It was also nice to do some long runs, so I’ve felt the car on heavy fuel, which is good for my experience. I’m pleased the team asked me to help out this week and I’m happy with how things went today.”

The majority of Sebastian Vettel’s day was spent on the hard and medium compound tyres, but when he got his chance on the softs, he went 3rd fastest. The German was just Jerez 2013ahead of Esteban Gutiérrez in the Sauber and Jean-Éric Vergne in the Toro Rosso – both cars have been showing great pace over the past few days.

After only completing 15 laps on Tuesday, Lewis Hamilton did 145 laps of the circuit, and in the process was sixth fastest.

Much happier after today’s work he said, ”Today we managed the kind of mileage that the car is capable of and I think we have a good platform to start working from,” he said. “Now we need to understand the F1 W04 even more: personally, I am learning something with every lap I do and every change I make to the set-up. Overall, I think we are probably at the level we would have hoped to be.”

“The team has done a great job to add downforce to the car over the winter and they now need Nico [Rosberg] and me to tell them where we can improve and the direction we need to go. Everybody has been incredibly supportive and I am really building a good bond with the team; they feel energized, ready to go and everybody is working flat out to move us forward.”

7th, 8th and 9th fastest were Pérez, Bottas (in the 2012 spec Williams) and de la Rosa. Jerez 2013

The Spaniard had his first day of testing compromised three laps into his first stint in the new F138. It was a gearbox problem that caused the Ferrari to come to a smoky stop but Ferrari sorted the problem quickly and the Spaniard was able to drive 51 laps of the circuit.

Charles Pic was 10th, Luiz Razia was 11th, and Paul di Resta was slowest again.

Pic said, “The track was colder this morning than the first three days so it was tricky getting the tyres to work, but we completed all the programs we’d set for the day and we have some very useful information to work on, and some interesting options to look at for the next test,” said the Frenchman.

“One key part of this test was to work on getting the most out of KERS and we’ve definitely Jerez 2013made good progress on that. There’s still more to come from that, especially maximizing its performance under braking, but I’m really happy with what we’ve worked through and can’t wait to get back in the car in Barcelona.”

The next pre-season test will be at Barcelona on the 19th – check the whole season here, and Williams will also be unveiling their car on the 19th.