By Ian Lockwood
March 10 2011

After Mark tested Chassis 02 for the first time yesterday, today it was Sebastian’s turn to steer the RB7-02 through a test programme.

Afterwards he said: “It was a good day and a good time, although to be honest, it’s difficult to say where we are, as the lap times of the teams are all over the place. We’ve done a lot of laps again today, which is good. We have had no major problems with reliability throughout testing and the speed looks good as far as we can judge, but I think we have to wait until after Melbourne – maybe in Malaysia or China – to really see where we are.”

As well as completing a series of long and short runs with the RB7 today, the team also completed a series of pit stop practices.

Head of Race Engineering Ian Morgan said: “It was good to have the race team here yesterday and today, to go through pit stop practices. Normally, we would do that once in pre-season testing but, as we lost a little time with the weather at the last test, this extra test was a good opportunity to get some more practice in ahead of Melbourne.

“As for the rest of today’s programme, it was much the same as yesterday. Seb did 112 laps without any real problems all day, which is gratifying. It’s always difficult though, to tell what your true position is until you start the season, but our pace looks good at the moment, which is promising.”

Unofficial Wednesday test times:
1. Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull Racing, 1:21.865 112 laps
2. Sebastien Buemi, Toro Rosso, 1:22.396
3. Vitaly Petrov, Renault, 1:22.670
4. Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, 1:22.888
5. Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 1:23.324
6. Paul di Resta, Force India, 1:24.334
7. Kamui Kobayashi, Sauber, 1:24.436
8. Nico Rosberg, Mercedes GP, 1:25.807
9. Jarno Trulli, Lotus, 1:26.090
10. Pastor Maldonado, Williams, 1:26.989
11. Jerome D’Ambrosio, Virgin, 1:28.982