F1: Bianchi Swaps Teams As Test Continues At Magny Cours

Formula 1

F1: Bianchi Swaps Teams As Test Continues At Magny Cours

Fastest in young driver test two days in a row...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted September 12, 2012 Balen (BEL)

Jules Bianchi was fast at the Magny Cours Young Drivers test but having done at the wheel of the Force India car. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Frenchman Jules Bianchi topped the times at the Magny Cours Young Drivers test again today, but having done it in a Ferrari yesterday he was back at the wheel of the Force India he regularly drives on the Friday of Grand Prix meetings.

“A very enjoyable day and great to do so many laps," said Bianchi.

"I’ve done a lot of Friday practice sessions with the team, but when you spend a full day in the car you can do so much more and really start to find the limit. It was a chance for me to get more used to the control systems and experience the car on both high and low fuel.

The team asked me to work on the set-up and we saw the lap times improve during the day. The time in the car today was very valuable and will allow me to help the team even more in the remaining seven races of the season.”

Bianchi was a second faster than Sam Bird, who had another day assessing updates at Mercedes, and the importance of his work was emphasized by the fact that Michael Schumacher took the time to come along and watch from the pits – although he was presumably frustrated that, no longer considered a rookie, he wasn’t allowed to drive!

Bird was happy with his stint: “We've had a second very positive day at the test and successfully completed our planned schedule, including the evaluation of the performance items that we wanted to achieve. We're happy with the results that we've seen so far and there is a lot of information to go through to hopefully help improve the car.”

For the final day on Thursday the W03 will be driven by New Zealander Brendon Hartley. The former Red Bull protégé is a regular in the Mercedes simulator and has been given the opportunity mainly so that he has a better reference point.

With Bianchi busy at Force India the Ferrari was taken over by Davide Rigon, the 26-year-old former GP2 and Superleague driver who had a test for Minardi at Vallelunga as long ago as November 2005. Like Hartley he is a simulator driver for Ferrari, and the aim today was for him to get a correlation between the virtual world and the real one.

Rigon completed an impressive 165 laps and Ferrari noted that “in the morning the focus was on aerodynamic measurements and in the afternoon, it switched to set-up testing, aimed at checking the correlation between these two areas and the work carried out in the simulator.”

Rigon himself said: “I’ve already been to Magny-Cours twice in other categories, but driving a Formula 1 car here was incredible! “At the start I was very excited, but after 10 laps I was able to concentrate completely on the day’s busy program.

“Doing so many laps gave me the opportunity to improve my feeling at the wheel and to understand the difference between the work on the simulator and being on track in a real car. It was also useful that, technically, this track is very complete.”

Pos Driver Car Time Laps
1. Jules Bianchi Sahara Force India 1:16.467 117
2. Sam Bird Mercedes 1:17.482 125
3. Davide Rigon Ferrari 1:17.925 165

Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.