With sandstorms intervening during the opening week of testing Ferrari, BMW Sauber and Toyota were playing catch-up today and all three teams ran extended programmes.
Pace setter Christian Klien completed 131 laps for BMW Sauber and posted a best time of 1.32.544, ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and Toyota’s Jarno Trulli.
“Today was a very productive day,” said Klien. “We collected a lot of data and I even did a long run at the end of the session. Again we didn’t have a single technical problem, which is very encouraging.”
Raikkonen had a productive day acclimatising Ferrari’s F60 to slick tyres and assessing different setup configurations, while Trulli, the busiest of all three drivers, focussed on mechanical and aerodynamic set-up.
“We made it through way more than two race distances today – in fact I think this is my personal best for mileage at a test day,” said Trulli.
“So I’d say this was a positive and productive day. There were a lot of items to test on a full programme and we got through everything. We made good progress and we were consistently competitive all day long. This has been a good start to our second week here.”
Testing in Bahrain continues tomorrow.
Today’s times:
Pos Driver Team Time Laps
1. Klien BMW-Sauber (B) 1:32.544 131
2. Raikkonen Ferrari (B) 1:32.804 116
3. Trulli Toyota (B) 1:33.064 141