Timo Glock made the best of the poor conditions in Jerez today, posting the fastest time in his Toyota as the Formula One teams battled with heavy rain at the Spanish test track.
Showers hit the track hard in the morning and the track failed to dry out sufficiently enough to enable the teams to run on slick tyres. But that didn’t stop Glock going quickest in the afternoon with a 1:30.979, over a second clear of second place man Robert Kubica, after completing 89 laps in his Tf109. The German reported that he was happy with the handling of his Toyota.
“It tends to be difficult to carry out meaningful testing when there is so much rain,” he said afterwards. “The conditions made things tricky again today but at least it stayed consistently wet so we were able to go through some work on set-up and tyres.
“It also gave me a chance to get used to pushing the TF109 in these conditions and we put more mileage on the car. It felt good again, just like in Portugal last month, so I’m happy with the day.”
BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica was second quickest despite enduring a false electrical alarm earlier in the day. Williams’ Nico Rosberg was third fastest ahead of Giancarlo Fisichella who notched up more mileage on the new Mercedes powered Force India VJM02.
Sebastian Vettel and Heikki Kovalaianen confirmed suspicions that today’s times were not a genuine reflection of the teams real pace. The duo wound up fifth and sixth fastest despite driving what are tipped to be two of the fastest cars on the grid this season.
Renault’s Nelson Piquet ended the day last over two seconds slower than pace setter Timo Glock.
“The wet weather today meant we had to change our programme and simply worked on getting miles on the car and using the wet weather tyres,” reflected Piquet.
“Because it continued raining throughout the day, the track conditions remained pretty consistent and so we were still able to learn some interesting things about the car.”
Today’s times:
Pos Driver Team Time Laps 1. Glock Toyota (B) 1:30.979 89 2. Kubica BMW-Sauber (B) 1:31.327 70 3. Rosberg Williams-Toyota (B) 1:31.451 114 4. Fisichella Force India-Mercedes (B) 1:31.547 54 5. Vettel Red Bull-Renault (B) 1:32.220 102 6. Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:33.371 91 7. Piquet Renault (B) 1:33.476 66
