By Colin Hicks
May 28 2002

Wet and Wild at Silverstone

By Colin Hicks
28/05/2002

Teams Present: Ferrari, McLaren, Williams, Sauber, Jordan, BAR, Renault, Jaguar, Toyota.

Drivers Present: Luca Badoer, Kimi Räikkönen, Alexander Würz, Ralf Schumacher, Juan Pablo Montoya, Felipe Massa, Giancarlo Fisichella, Anthony Davidson, Jarno Trulli, Eddie Irvine, Stéphane Sarrazin, & Ryan Briscoe.

The first morning of the three day test session, for the beginning of the build up to the British Grand Prix, started with dry conditions on track. All teams except Arrows and Minardi had presence at the circuit, with the former expected to arrive tomorrow.

The dry conditions did not last, unfortunately, and by the time Giancarlo Fisichella started the first timed run of the day light rain had started to fall. The light rain made the track progressively wetter and all teams had to switch wet set-ups by 11am. The slippery conditions caused quite a few mishaps. For example, Luca Badoer in the Ferrari running wide at Brooklands and only just making the corner. But there were no actual stoppages until Alexander Würz spun off, again ironically at Brooklands.

This was the second problem of the day for the Austrian. Earlier, after only ten minutes of the session had elapsed, his McLaren MP4/17 stopped only metres out of its garage due to a faulty sensor. However, this time Würz could only blame himself as he ended up backwards in the gravel at Brooklands. Luckily for the team the car was undamaged and soon back out on the circuit.

This was the beginning of a stop start day. The next to go off was Jarno Trulli in the Renault and this caused another ten minute delay. After this the teams was able to continue uninterrupted until the session ended five minutes early due to yet another stoppage.

Fastest in the wet conditions was Kimi Räikkönen in the McLaren, followed by Badoer’s Ferrari. Although, due to the continually changing track conditions, it was hard to tell who had the out and out speed.

Rain was still falling as the afternoon session got underway and all the cars were displaying the characteristic rooster tails as they sped down the straights.

Ralf Schumacher was the first to have a major incident. Again at the Brooklands corner. The Williams driver ran slightly wide, put the left rear wheel on the grass and the back just stepped out and spun the car round. He ended up with the rear of the car on the circuit and front in the gravel. He seemed to have a bit of difficulty selecting reverse gear but eventually got the car pointing in the right direction and returned to the pits.

The first red light stoppage occurred just before 3pm as the circuit was closed for two minutes, to enable marshals to clear pieces of Anthony Davidson’s rear wing off the start/finish straight. But from then on it was stoppages that marked the afternoon’s progress.

Kimi Räikkönen suffered a blown engine entering the Hangar straight and had to be rescued by the marshals. Anthony Davidson’s BAR also stopped out on track as did one of the Toyotas.

But the most serious incident happened to Stéphane Sarrazin. The Toyota test driver lost control exiting Bridge bend and hit the barrier damaging the left side of the car, bounced across the track and ended up facing the wrong direction on the entrance to Priory corner. The Incident and Medical vehicles were despatched. He was shaken but otherwise uninjured. The circuit was shut for 20 minutes whilst the marshals swept the track free of debris.

This let the teams out for a final 15 minutes of running before the 5pm closure. However this was cut short when both Felipe Massa in the Sauber and Anthony Davidson went off at the same time in apparently unrelated incidents.

Alexander Würz used this moment to run a Launch Control start into the pitlane. The McLaren test driver slowed coming around Luffield and bought the MP4/17 to a halt facing the pitlane entrance. Then there was about 10 seconds of inactivity as he set the sequence up. An electrical clicking could be heard as the systems engaged, then the engine rose to the rev limiter and he roared into the pitlane entrance road, remembering of course to hit the limiter before entering the actual pitlane itself.

Testing continues tomorrow.