Sebastian Vettel was quickest at the final day of the Young Drivers’ Test as he evaluated Pirelli’s new tyres.
The championship points leader set the fastest time of the three-day test, just under a tenth of a second insider Daniel Ricciardo’s time for Toro Rosso yesterday.
A busy day at Silverstone saw sixteen different drivers sharing the ten cars that were running. McLaren, Lotus, Sauber and Williams were the only teams running one driver during the test.
Vettel shared his Red Bull berth with Carlos Sainz Jnr (pictured) who set the fourth fastest time behind Lotus’s Nicolas Prost. Davide Rigon and Felipe Massa were next, the pair sharing a Ferrari.
Susie Wolff had a busy afternoon for Williams, the team performing 28 practice pit stops following the problems experienced by the team following the German Grand Prix.
Marussia and Caterham both took the opportunity to use a pair of race drivers to work with the new tyres. “I was quite pleased with how consistent the sets we used today have been,” said Charles Pic, “the deg levels are certainly lower than the tyres we’ve used so far this year and that should help us.”
Russian driver Daniil Kvyat had his first run in an F1 car with Toro Rosso and went off at one point. “I’m not sure what happened,” he said, “I just felt a lack of grip at the rear from the tyres and had snap oversteer.”
| Driver | Car | Best time | Laps | Difference | |
| 1 | Sebastian Vettel | Red Bull-Renault RB9 | 1’32.894 | 79 | |
| 2 | Adrian Sutil | Force India-Mercedes VJM06 | 1’33.242 | 99 | 0.348 |
| 3 | Nicolas Prost | Lotus-Renault E21 | 1’33.256 | 83 | 0.362 |
| 4 | Carlos Sainz Jnr | Red Bull-Renault RB9 | 1’33.546 | 35 | 0.652 |
| 5 | Davide Rigon | Ferrari F138 | 1’33.592 | 20 | 0.698 |
| 6 | Felipe Massa | Ferrari F138 | 1’33.624 | 69 | 0.730 |
| 7 | Jean-Eric Vergne | Toro Rosso-Ferrari STR8 | 1’33.647 | 42 | 0.753 |
| 8 | Gary Paffett | McLaren-Mercedes MP4-28 | 1’34.924 | 77 | 2.030 |
| 9 | Susie Wolff | Williams-Renault FW35 | 1’35.093 | 89 | 2.199 |
| 10 | Giedo van der Garde | Caterham-Renault CT03 | 1’35.155 | 65 | 2.261 |
| 11 | Daniil Kvyat | Toro Rosso-Ferrari STR8 | 1’35.281 | 22 | 2.387 |
| 12 | Charles Pic | Caterham-Renault CT03 | 1’35.576 | 60 | 2.682 |
| 13 | Kimiya Sato | Sauber-Ferrari C32 | 1’35.642 | 67 | 2.748 |
| 14 | Rodolfo Gonzalez | Marussia-Cosworth MR02 | 1’36.339 | 24 | 3.445 |
| 15 | James Calado | Force India-Mercedes VJM06 | 1’36.451 | 5 | 3.557 |
| 16 | Jules Bianchi | Marussia-Cosworth MR02 | 1’36.744 | 39 | 3.850 |
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Image © Red Bull/Getty
Alex de Brito (@corix)
19th July 2013, 17:24
Massa, Rigon is quicker than you.
Bosley (@)
19th July 2013, 17:31
“Bianchi, Gonzalez is quicker than you” is probably even harder to swallow.
…should these times actually represent anything that is.
Alex de Brito (@corix)
20th July 2013, 0:31
This one is probably harder to swallow indeed. But at least Bianchi is not in danger of losing his seat as Massa is.
petebaldwin (@)
20th July 2013, 1:32
@bosley True but Bianchi managed a 1:35.802 in FP2 and 1:34.990 in FP3 on lower fuel at the British GP. Are we expecting these new tyres to be a second or more slower?
It puts Gonzalez’s time in perspective a bit also – with an updated car, his best run was still half a second slower than Bianchi’s high fuel run a few weeks ago.
tmax (@tmax)
19th July 2013, 18:00
@corix LOL… Oh no Not again says Massa …. even young drivers are quicker than me…what did I do to deserve this ????????
Alex de Brito (@corix)
20th July 2013, 0:33
@tmax He really need to find some race results to keep his seat right now.
tmax (@tmax)
20th July 2013, 1:08
@corix I believe he will just do fine as far as race seat is concerned. I think the problem is more for Ferrari compared to Massa. Nowadays a good No 2 driver is hard to come by. As far as Ferrari is concerned their no 2 driver should constantly accompany Número UNO on the podium, bring in good points, have some decent speed and most importantly make sure that he or she is not faster than Alonso.
The big problem with young drivers is that they don’t want to take chances with them. Who knows if some ones turns up brilliant like Hamilton in 2007 and or vettel in 2009 puts in the team balance in trouble. That is the last problem they want to have along with their current set of troubles. Massa so far seems to be their best option for 2014. There is very few No 2 driver on the grid today that matches Massa’s caliber.
Max Jacobson (@vettel1)
19th July 2013, 17:40
I think that’s a fantastically bad headline: what a headline for the young driver’s test.
tmax (@tmax)
19th July 2013, 17:59
@vettel1 while I do understand your point…..
For all practical purposes we can definitely say Vettel himself is a young driver with the only difference that he has already won 3 WDC when he is young :)
Max Jacobson (@vettel1)
19th July 2013, 18:00
@tmax true enough, true enough ;)
David-A (@david-a)
19th July 2013, 18:16
@wrsgo @vettel1
Vettel’s also younger than “young drivers” Prost, Rigon, Paffett, Wolff and Gonzalez, plus rookie Van Der Garde!
xjr15jaaag (@xjr15jaaag)
19th July 2013, 18:44
@david-a
That really puts his achievements into perspective…
One of the most successful drivers ever, and he’s still younger than a load of GP2/FR3.5 drivers
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
21st July 2013, 0:09
@david-a @wrsgo @vettel1 It’s not about age it’s about will, trust, intelligence, experience and opportunity. What’s physically the difference between an 18 year old and a 25 year old driver none but mentally alot can change.
Max Jacobson (@vettel1)
21st July 2013, 0:54
@peartree we all get that, it’s tongue in cheek (or at least I’ve presumed anyway)! The point has just been made that Vettel is in fact “young” after all ;)
Nevertheless, it’s still a fantastically bad headline I maintain!
James Muscat (@jamesremuscat)
19th July 2013, 20:00
You never know, maybe this “Vettel” kid has a future in F1 someday.
Max Jacobson (@vettel1)
19th July 2013, 23:04
@jamesremuscat I wouldn’t get ahead of yourself, they said the same thing about that Schumacher fellow… ;)
tmax (@tmax)
20th July 2013, 1:12
@jamesremuscat hope some team principal has noticed him today and has the confidence in giving him a race seat for next year !!!!!
At least I Did ……
Tariq Patel (@mdtariqp)
21st July 2013, 14:37
+1
MahavirShah (@mahavirshah)
19th July 2013, 18:04
Seems like Susie Wolff did a decent job.
Pete (@repete86)
19th July 2013, 18:08
Not compared to the times set by the other people who tested the Williams.
David-A (@david-a)
19th July 2013, 19:06
About 1s off Maldonado and Juncadella. But we can’t tell what exactly was going on- it is only a test.
TMF (@)
19th July 2013, 18:36
Only the team can tell how well she performed. I’d really like to see her in a FP session.
MNM101 (@mnm101)
19th July 2013, 19:03
I really don’t understand all the hype around Susie, she is 30 and hasn’t impressed in her recent years, does anyone really expect her to get a seat? I mean seriously… the best she can expect is to be a test driver if anything
BJ (@beejis60)
19th July 2013, 20:29
Probably because she’s hot and that’s about it. Look at Danica. She was terrible for years. Still isn’t very good.
PeterH
19th July 2013, 22:46
Danica was never what I would term terrible.
Thats what I never got about the Danica-Hate, She was never as awful as the haters claimed. Was she one of the best in the Indycar series, No but she was also far from been even close to the worst.
In 2009 for example she was best non Penske/Ganassi car in the championship, Beating her 3 team mates regularly through the season & that included Ex-Series champion & this year’s Indy 500 winner Tony Kannan.
Even looking at Nascar, She led at Montreal (A road circuit, An F1 circuit) until someone threw a shoe on the track which damaged her car. She led at Road America & was 3rd when Jacques Villeneuve spun her on the last lap.
These are both drivers circuits in big, heavy Nascars which are cars you really need to drive & she was a front runner in both.
This year in the daytona 500 she grabbed pole, led laps & ran top 3 all race until she got freight-trained down to 8th on the final corner by experienced drivers who understood how to use the draft in nascar’s better than she did.
You can say that Danica was an average, if not above average driver capable of very strong drives on her day, Yet I seriously don’t believe anyone can seriously say she was terrible, awful or anything similar.
celeste (@celeste)
19th July 2013, 20:37
There is no hype. She has no future, she is only doing the test because she is a woman and she is the wife of Toto Wolff
James_mc (@james_mc)
19th July 2013, 21:28
Ah yes. The same Toto Wolff who left Williams to work for the Mercedes F1 team?
Jon Sandor (@jonsan)
19th July 2013, 21:55
The same Wolff who remains a major shareholder in Williams.
Deej92 (@deej92)
19th July 2013, 21:23
I don’t think anyone expects her to get a seat, or any FP sessions for that matter. People shouldn’t expect her to get any more than a couple of tests. Now with Juncadella on board, Williams will probably give him some FP sessions at least next year.
GT_Racer
19th July 2013, 23:07
Should be considered that Susie spent much of her day doing work related to simulator correlation rather than actually really pushing the car for lap time.
She does a lot of work in the Williams simulator so today was more about looking at how close it is to reality & where the simulator can be improved or altered for better data correlation.
The team have put her in the simulator a lot the last 2 years so they clearly at the very least value the feedback she gives them, If they didn’t she’d hardly be in there (If at all).
Thats something people often don’t see, You don’t have to be Vettel/Alonso/Hamilton super-quick to be a good test driver because thats not what been a test driver is really about. Been a test driver is about having a good feel & understanding of the car, good consistency & been able to give good feedback to the engineer’s relating to what new parts or setup changes have done to the car.
Luca Badoer for example was a good driver but was never world champion fast (Don’t believe he was as bad as 2009 made him look), But he was kept at Ferrari for as long as he was because he was a brilliant test driver.
Deej92 (@deej92)
20th July 2013, 0:58
Some teams have test drivers who won’t ever do more than test, like McLaren with Paffett and Turvey, because of their experience at the factory with the simulator.
Badoer did top timesheets in testing sometimes, but then we saw him in the race seat in 2009 and how far off the pace he was. The same would probably happen with these test drivers.
GT_Racer
20th July 2013, 10:20
As I said in my original comment, Badoer was never as bad as 2009 made him look.
Jumping into a difficult to drive car that you have never driven before, Having not driven an F1 car for over a year & not having raced in anything for about 9 years was always going to result in struggles.
Fisichella didn’t exactly do much better because the 2009 Ferrari was a tricky car to drive. Kimi & Massa had adapted to it through the season, They had figured out how to drive round its flaws & had adapted to the effect KERS had on it under braking.
Had Schumacher been able to make the comeback at that time I doubt even he’d have been able to do much in the way of results.
When Luca was racing regularly he wasn’t actually that bad & I think its a shame that this is forgotten because of what happened in 2009.
the_sigman (@sigman1998)
19th July 2013, 18:58
Can I see somewhere the times of all three days together?
Fisha695 (@fisha695)
19th July 2013, 19:15
I’ve combined them into a single image (easiest way to post here & other places)
http://hostingbytes.us/images/3/4397960.jpg
the_sigman (@sigman1998)
19th July 2013, 19:19
Thanks!!!
xjr15jaaag (@xjr15jaaag)
19th July 2013, 23:10
I can’t see why Susie Wolff is in the role of Williams test driver; her DTM results have been unimpressive, and in the test (I know you cant compare laptimes during testing, but still…) she was 0.4s slower than Juncadella, which equates to an awful lot of money saved in developing the car to make it 0.4 seconds faster.
thatscienceguy
20th July 2013, 3:18
Absolutely none of which has anything to do with being a good test driver. You don’t need to be the fastest driver in the world to be a good tester. See GT_Racer’ s post above.
Tristan (@skipgamer)
20th July 2013, 0:40
Heh, I could really imagine Vettel pacing his fastest lap to Ricciardo, so the team can applaud Ricciardo for his good performance (in a torro rosso no less!)
I’m sure Vettel wants Ricciardo next to him as much as Ricciardo does, rather than Raikkonen who would have a good chance at taking points off him all season.
MNM101 (@mnm101)
20th July 2013, 1:07
There is no evidence to suggest Kimi would beat Seb, in fact the evidence points in the other direction, I don’t think Kimi would give up his status as a number 1 driver at Lotus, to go up against another number one driver who is gonna beat him, so he can drive a car that is not guaranteed to be any good next season
Tristan (@skipgamer)
20th July 2013, 2:16
You’d be mad to bet against Ricciardo doing any better than Raikkonen would though, and there wouldn’t be so much speculation if he wasn’t thinking about it at least.
Tristan (@skipgamer)
20th July 2013, 2:17
Bet on*, not against
MNM101 (@mnm101)
20th July 2013, 2:31
@skipgamer I agree with you there, but who knows what RIC will evolve into… Although I don’t think he is as naturally talented as Kimi
GoDaddyGuy27 (@godaddyguy27)
20th July 2013, 12:43
Prediction for Williams next year VB and DJ?