2010 F1 testing live: 19th February

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Fernando Alonso gets down to work on a dry track

Most of the team will swap their drivers for today’s test and early indications are the weather will be kinder to them today.

Join us below to find out how the teams get on in their tenth day of testing.

Times from today’s test

DriverCarBest timeLapsDifference
Mark WebberRed Bull-Renault RB679.2991150
Fernando AlonsoFerrari F1080.1151320.816
Jenson ButtonMcLaren-Mercedes MP4-2580.3941011.095
Nico HulkenbergWilliams-Cosworth FW3281.4321382.133
Michael SchumacherMercedes W0181.437792.138
Robert KubicaRenault R3081.9161002.617
Adrian SutilForce India-Mercedes VJM0381.939692.64
Kamui KobayashiBMW Sauber-Ferrari C2982.228282.929
Jaime AlguersuariToro Rosso-Ferrari STR582.5641203.265
Lucas di GrassiVirgin-Cosworth VR-0183.504344.205
Heikki KovalainenLotus-Cosworth T12783.521684.222

Testing notes

The poor weather continues to be the main story at Jerez as the teams struggle to complete as much dry running as they can in the increasingly rare breaks between showers.

Lotus have some ground to make up today after losing a lot of time yesterday after Heikki Kovalainen crashed and a replacement from wing was not available. The team were expecting to receive one overnight.

Today’s testing line-up

McLaren MP4-25Jenson Button
Mercedes W01Michael Schumacher
Red Bull RB6Mark Webber
Ferrari F10Fernando Alonso
Williams FW32Nico Hulkenberg
BMW Sauber C29Kamui Kobayashi
Renault R30Robert Kubica
Force India VJM03Adrian Sutil
Toro Rosso STR5Jaime Alguersuari
Virgin VR-01Lucas di Grassi
Lotus T127Heikki Kovalainen

The track: Circuito de Jerez

The teams are testing at the Circuito de Jerez, formerly the home of the Spanish (1986-1990) and European Grands Prix (1994 and 1997):


View Larger Map

Eight of this year’s pre-season test days will take place at this circuit. Last week Lewis Hamilton set a best time of 1’19.583 at the track.

Live Tweets and times

You can find live times from the track on this site.

Here’s the latest Tweets from people at the track (plus me):

If you would like to suggest a Twitter feed to add to the list, please name them in the comments. The list only updates when this page is refreshed.

2010 F1 testing

Image (C) Mercedes

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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126 comments on “2010 F1 testing live: 19th February”

  1. Here we go… pray for sunshine!!

  2. I hope it’s mostly dry today. It’s hard to work out what’s going on when it’s dry, and its almost impossible when its wet.

    —-

    I’m interested in Heikki Kovalainen’s crash yesterday. Was it his mistake as he said? Was it the car being hard to drive because they hadn’t gotten the throttle maps and stuff right? Was it because he was expecting the downforce level of a Mclaren and he had X % less downforce that last years Mclaren?

    I’m beginning to really route for these little new teams because it all seems so very hard.

    Adam Cooper seems to have the inside track on what’s going on with Campos and USF1:

    http://adamcooperf1.com/2010/02/18/will-lopezcampos-deal-be-confirmed-soon/

    1. are you a policeman? #:)

  3. POLE on the POLE! ! ! Eh Sorry, I’m so excited . . .

  4. Looks like this is the link to the live timing for today from that Greek website:

    http://www.msfree.gr/ms.php?id=10807

    No times listed yet presumably because they are all doing installation laps.

    1. Well… shumi with a 2:09… lol

    2. I think this one is better.
      http://live.autosport.com/

      1. No no no. :-) this one is the bees knees.

        it updates live and if you click on the drivers name it gives you a list of the laps he has done and the times.

        I didn’t find this site. Some other dude posted a link to it yesterday, or possibly the day before.

        Yeah you can’t Google translate the timing bit because it’s Flash, but that’s irrelevant since numbers and names can be understood in any language.

        1. true enough… I just have them both opened plus twitter so your covered in all angles.. :)
          Oh… and this site of course.. :)

          1. yeah me too.

      2. Nice link…..checking it now. Session red flagged @ the moment.

  5. dry running is a must… sure it’s always good to get wet weather data… but not all wet weather!.. it looks
    promising today.. 8)

  6. I tried to google translate that page and it doesn’t seem to work.. would be awesome to have that in english

    1. hello Bwells. msfree is using a system for autorefresh which creates problems to google translate. You could use the following link for english translation of the article but you will have to make the refresh for the times…

      http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.msfree.gr%2Fincludes%2Fdetails.php%3Fid%3D10807&sl=el&tl=en

  7. I see that Lotus is a firm believer in any press is good press… on there twitter account they just posted 4 articles about there crash yesterday.. lol.. and then Kovi stops on track.. :)

    1. I’m beginning to root for them because of it. All the major players in Lotus are using Twitter and they openly showed their diffuser at the launch. …wow.

      …Although I assume that was because their car has no amazing features any other team would want to copy at this stage.

  8. I think Force india has a problem they are not driving as much as it should. Yesterday they didn’t drove a lot either. engine problems or just electrical due the water?

    1. Seems Sutil is driving again instead of Liuzzi. Keith

      1. Thanks MacLeod – Force India changing their plans again.

    2. since they expected weather to be dog, they ran di Resta yesterday.. as the weather forecast for today & tomorrow is good… hence all plans got modified… Sutil today Tonio tomorrow…

  9. Some new pics from yesterday’s test here, including the Lotus and Virgin: F1 testing pictures: 18th February

  10. Jenson’s got off to a good start!

    1. Being a McLaren/Jenson it’s good to see him at the top of the timesheets for once! :D

      But they’re all at least 5 seconds off the pace so plenty of room for improvement for everyone.

      Apparently di Grassi may have struck a barrier a few minutes ago.

      1. *Mclaren/Jenson fan I mean…

        1. Yes lot’s of room for improvement.. and that Virgin just can’t seem to keep it’s wings! I hope they have a spare today.. :)

          1. They say “spare part X wont reach us until the evening, so no more testing.” Surely they could have sent over more than one spare component, when they know their car is going to break every day!

  11. That green flag lasted all of a minute! How frustrating… do they know it’s 2am here and I should be sleeping!! lol…

    1. I know! There’s more red flags than a communist convention…

      1. lol… looks like Kobayashi this time.. so you’re close!

  12. I’m all for the British drivers, but mainly I just love F1 period!

    1. With a name like Derek you can only be for English drivers lol

      1. Actually I’m Scottish!! But I’m a Hamilton fan and or any other British driver. If paul Di Rista starts winning then ………..?

        1. Be quite good to see another Scot winning a race!

  13. Working 8:45 – 7:45 at my local library today (in case you didn’t guess, I’m a librarian funnily enough). Thank fully I have this and Live Autosport to keep me busy :D

    1. Thankfully you have an internet connection.. :)

      1. Thankfully someone knows how to spell thankfully! Sometimes I wonder how I became a librarian…

  14. Wow, they just keep on throwing these cars into the gravel, don’t they?

  15. Can someone please explain me what’s this whole ordeal about Ferrari’s new chassis ?

    1. Not totally sure… maybe it’s just the second one but they said there was some improvements.. but I know that Fernando’s going out on slicks so the times should drop.. :)

    2. Nothing is new. It’s exactly the same as the one they’ve used in Valencia

      1. I believe it’s just the 2nd of the 2 chassis they’ve built so far. Would be better to share the load between the two so that when they get to Bahrain, one driver isn’t in a car thats already racked thousands of testing miles when the other driver is in a brand spanking new tub.

      2. No, this is the second chassis they are using. I do not know the differences.

  16. Shumi and Fernando just had a sweet battle… but Micheal set his best time on a 4 lap run where Fernando was on a 9 lapper.. :)

  17. Could you add the VirginRacing twitter feed – they seem quite on the ball (and in the barriers!)

  18. Uhoh the Greek site with the live timing seems to have gone down. Damn, that was a great service they had on there.

    I hope I didn’t contribute to it’s demise by posting a link to it.

    1. Oh. I’m wrong. It’s back. Maybe a problem at my end.

      1. Probably gremlins or something!!

  19. Alonso goes fastest: 1m21.969

    Getting closer to Hamilton’s fastest from last week…

    1. still 2 seconds off

    2. Not just you it was down here as well… too many connections.. and FOM don’t feel there’s a world wide market for F1.. I think there is!!

  20. Me father seems to think we’ll see the true pace of each car at Barcelona (weather permitting), but I don’t think we’ll see that until Bahrain. What’s everyone else’s take?

    1. We need a dry track, air temp 15c + and low wind in Barcelona then the cars will show their true colours.

    2. as we get closer to Bahrain we’ll get a closer idea of each teams pace but ultimately Q3 in Bahrain will be the true judge.. :)

      1. Q3 may well not be a test of ultimate pace because of the new tyre rule about having to start on the quali tyres. It might turn out that the best thing to do is qualify something like 5th on hard tyres, rather than qualify 1st on soft. It’ll be interesting to see how the rules actually work in practice. I’m fairly sure that someone is going to totally screw it up in the first race and look stupid.

        1. Q2 then?

    3. As last year, I think we’ll see the true pace in Barcelona.
      I remember 12 months ago in Barcelona that Briatore said about the fastest laps set by Brawn GP:”There are some teams that are running low on fuel to catch some sponsorship, no need to worry about them.” :D

      1. Another instance where we all see flav is a complete c**k!

        We will see the try pace in q1 actually cost we’ll get to see “for sure” who is the fastest out of virgin and lotus, and any other team that shows up.

        But we’ll get a good idea in bar-phell-ownar, because they’ll all generally do a glory run towards the end!

      2. funny how some people are saying that about Sauber these days.. although they haven’t been as impressive lately..

      3. Ironic given what Alonso then did to plonk his car on the front row! :D

  21. I think the snow plough device on the front of the Mclaren is going to make a huge difference to the lap time if they have it right. I expect the other teams will be rushing to copy it when they are a second a lap faster in bahrain! (in my dreams of course! but you never know.)

  22. lets say the 3 completely new teams get to the grid, Lotus, Virgin and USF1/Stefan GP, if 8 get knocked out in Q1 it would be a pity if the 6 get knocked out nearly every, leaves it easy to get out of Q1 compared to last year.

  23. another red flag means the end of my late night… have fun all

  24. McLaren consistently in the 1.21s and so were Ferrari, Red Bull in the 1.22s (before it broke!)Looks like we are getting a gimps of the pace already guys!

    1. Just to add to my last: They all looked like they were on a 9 lap stint, so time were comparable

      1. Still don’t know the fuels loads though or what they are testing.

  25. Does anybody know what is wrong with the Lotus? They caused a red flag at 9.34 but I have not seen any post about the problem.

    1. Lotus car stopped with a clutch sensor failure.

  26. Hekki on twitter

    Bit of a troubled morning, clutch problem taken time to fix. I’ve taken early lunch, hopefully non stop afternoon ahead!

  27. It’s over for US F1: crashtests are cancelled, No sponsor money to pay crew and deliveries. (NYtimes)

    Jose Maria Lopez cried when Winsor contacted him. (argentine media)

    1. so here come Stefan GP.

    2. Well done MacLeod for the news but what a bummer for USF1. I think USF1 has to succeed in order for Formula 1 to make it in North America. This is not good for Formula 1!

      1. It’s indeed bad news for F1 for the states overall. And gues what Stefan GP started their Car today also (autosport.com)

        Sad day indeed, i think we will see Stephan at Barcelona.

      2. It is a shame for those involved with the team, the designers and engineers who will unfortunately not see their labour of love reach the track.

    3. HounslowBusGarage
      19th February 2010, 12:46

      MacLeod, could you post the NYT link where you found this story please. I can’t find it on their site.

      1. No direct link to NY times, but according to this site http://www.rtl.nl/(/sport/rtl_gp/formule1/nieuws/)/sport/rtl_gp/components/formule1/nieuws/2010/02_februari/18/100218_us_f1.xml

        There is a insider of/from NYtimes (probaly the financial department of the NY times)telling them about the money or lack of it. therefore cancelling all tests incl. the crashtest and you know no crashtest no races.

        So no official statments but hearing some friends on wall street it’won’t be long. (when i saw that article i ask some people for confirment and they told me it it won’t be long. So 2 sources means it’s over

        1. Sorry for the late respaonse i was on lunch but i think that is the article the other site was referring too.

  28. Mclaren showing their speed today. I cant think of a better testing partership than Button and Hamilton. Both totally different styles, which must give two perspectives to look at the same problem. This i am sure will be a major advantage as the season progesses.

    1. Or two entirely different problems.

      1. Yeah perhaps. But if it is a problem for one driver and not the other you know that it comes from the driving style. If the two drivers have different problems you would know again driving style is to blame. That is stil preferable to having two drivers with same style with same problem. In this case it much harder to separate the two. I cant think of a sitauaion (atleast in a testing sense) where having two drivers with similar styles is better.

        1. Not necessarily. The car is generally developed to suit the driving style, not the other way round. If both drivers have similar driving styles and struggle to overcome the same problem with the car, then the team only has one set of problems to solve. If the drivers have very different styles, one may struggle with one set of problems with the car and the other may struggle with a different problems. Then the team has two sets of problems to deal with, and it effectively has to develop the car in two different directions at the same time to suit each driver. This means either twice as much work for the team(or only making half as much progress for each driver) or focusing all the team’s effort on one driver only.

          In 2006 McLaren had Raikkonen and Montoya, who wanted very different things from their cars, and the results were not good. Similar driving styles helps to provide consistency of feedback and helps the team focus.

  29. STEFAN GP will be competing in F1.

    1. That is not (YET) official.

    2. With driver’s Kazuki Nakajina (oh, the joy!) and Jacques Villenueve (tbc)…

    3. yh, but they are having a red car :(. I think Ferrari should be the only team that have a red car

      1. I don’t think you can just make a colour exclusive to one team, afterall Mclaren have been silver for over a decade, does that mean Mercedes Benz GP should not be allowed silver this year?

    4. In you educated opinion, of course. They might and probably will but at present that isn’t a fact.

  30. Button appears to be on a long run, though his times are gradually dropping off from his early 1m20s to low 1m22s.

    So Button set that time with a decent fuel load on-board.

    1. Since they can only use a few tyres each weekend. I think they are testing how well tryes cope with being abused in qualfying and then used in a race.

  31. This is by far my favourite picture yet
    http://twitpic.com/122y77
    AMAZING!!!!!!

    1. whoop whoop :)

  32. Great BBT. Thanks.

  33. Is Virgins car really that slow? Have they managed sub 1.30 at all yet?

    1. CFD? They don’t have the real front wing on it yet of course. …Anyway i’m hoping they are good enough to have a battle with Lotus and who ever else of the new teams gets it together.

  34. wow…Button is still 1.038s in front, though.

  35. Alonso now got even faster.

  36. Williams 100!

  37. From msfree: Sorry for the connection problem guys… We have far more visits that we except. We try to stay up and serve as many as we can… keep refreshing the page when you get “to many connetions” :)

  38. Well..virgin doing good right now.

  39. Only one hour of today’s testing to go. Who will be the last gasp hero? Very soon we’ll know. *Cue dramatic music…*

    Oh, the glory and excitement of pre-season testing. Truly nailbiting.

    Championship points awarded for fastest pre-season test times? Anyone? No? A brilliant idea if i do say so myself. Either that or this librarian work is driving me slightly crackers.

    1. just a little koo koo.. lol.. but you’ve had a long day in the library.. :)

  40. Yeah Virgin have shut me up alright! :)

    They put in a good time.

  41. Here is the link
    http://translate.google.co.in/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.confidential-renault.fr%2F&sl=fr&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8
    which states that there will be 40% update coming for R30 for 1st GP. Hope that will place Renault higher in order.

  42. i discovered something that the cars this year at jerez are doing 1.19s and in 2004 it was 1.16 sec
    thats a massive difference
    i hope alonzo finishes top
    i think it is gone to be a close season
    it will be ferrari v mclaren v red bull and possible mercedes gp

    1. the rb5 in Dec did 1m17…

  43. Last few minutes of testing and there’s some cars on track.. and glory runs??

  44. its been red flagged but i dont no why

  45. It does look close for the top 4.. although judging by the stint lengths.. I’m thinking that Ferrari is on top.. Webber’s top time was on a 3 lap stint, while Button’s was on a 7 lapper.. Fernando’s best lap of 1:20.115 oddly enough was his first lap of a 15 lap stint that was all mid to high 20’s.. they seem to be more consistent on the long runs.. I think I’m throwing a 20 on Fernando for WDC.. lol 8)

  46. What we miss is an information on whether they refuelled after those short stints or not. We could have an idea on fuel load.

  47. Wow at Webbers time, a full 8 tenths ahead of everyone! o.O

  48. Webber sets fastest time. here is a summary

    Pos Driver Team Time Laps
    1. Webber Red Bull-Renault (B) 1:19.299 115
    2. Alonso Ferrari (B) 1:20.115 132
    3. Button McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:20.394 101
    4. Hulkenberg Williams-Cosworth (B) 1:21.432 138
    5. M.Schumacher Mercedes GP (B) 1:21.437 79
    6. Kubica Renault (B) 1:21.916 100
    7. Sutil Force India-Mercedes (B) 1:21.939 69
    8. Kobayashi BMW-Sauber (B) 1:22.228 28
    9. Alguersuari Toro Rosso-Ferrari (B) 1:22.564 120
    10. di Grassi Virgin-Cosworth (B) 1:23.504 34
    11. Kovalainen Lotus-Cosworth (B) 1:23.521 68

    1. What does (B) signify?

      1. Almost certainly (B) stands for Bridgestone.

      2. Bridgestone. It is useless as (B) is the only tyre supplier.

        1. See, that’s what I thought. It’s like, Bridgestone is the only tyre so why bother with a B sign?

      3. Bridgestone I think.

  49. Updated the spreadsheet with the final times for today… see the link posted previously if interested.

  50. I think todays times are an indicator of final standings.

    1. We still have Barcelona

    2. It’s too early to tell, I’m sure top teams aren’t running the definite aero pack. Still, Ferrari and Red Bull look stronger than Mclaren and Mercedes.

  51. Button says Ferrari is faster than McLaren. But i think Red Bull is the fastest car of 2010!

    1. After all they have got Renault engine

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