McLaren's Perez sets fastest lap on second test day in Barcelona

Sergio Perez ended the second day of the preseason testing on the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain with the fastest time in the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes. The new team driver from Mexico put 97 laps on the MP4-28 in what the team termed "an extremely productive day" with his best unofficial lap time of 1:21.848.

Perez started the day on short runs and setup changes to test the "rack-to-tunnel aero correlation" before the afternoon when the Woking, UK based team switched to the longer runs on the soft Pirelli tyres. Jenson Button will be in the cockpit for the final two days on the 4.655km circuit.

Second fastest was the three-time consecutive Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel. The German held the top time until Perez took the best unofficial time. Vettel toured the circuit for 84 laps in his Infiniti Red Bull Racing RB9, and his best lap was a 1:22.197.

Unfortunately for Vettel, he had to stop on track which ended his day early. "We had some issues with reliability today and we couldn’t do as many laps as we wanted, but I think it’s better that this kind of thing happens today rather than in Australia,” Vettel said.

The team's Race Engineer Coordinator Andy Damerum said: “The stops we had today weren’t too serious and we’ll have everything sorted for tomorrow. We know where the issues are." They hope to have clean runs tomorrow when Mark Webber will take over the RB9 as they continue in their testing mode.

With a lap time of 1:22.697, Kimi Räikkönen again showed that the Lotus F1 Renault team may end up giving the three top teams a run for the gold this season. Both the Finn and Romain Grosjean had set top times in Jerez testing, and once again Räikkönen had the E21 in the top three.

However, for the second day in a row it was not a perfect test session for the Lotus team as a gearbox problem in the morning cost them valuable on-track time. Grosjean will take the E21 out over the final two days.

Said Räikkönen: “If yesterday wasn’t an ideal day then today was more of the same. Fortunately, once we were able to get a lap in we could see that the car has good pace. We test to find any problems so in that respect we’re doing a good job, but it’s frustrating. It’s no secret that we want to get more laps on the board and that’s the target for the rest of this test and the final sessions next week.”

Unofficial times

Pos.	Driver	Car	Time	Laps
1	Sergio Perez	McLaren	1:21.848	97
2	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull	1:22.197	84
3	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus	1:22.697	43
4	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:22.726	121
5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:23.247	76
6	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:23.561	98
7	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso	1:23.718	70
8	Paul Di Resta	Force India	1:23.971	62
9	Nico Hülkenberg	Sauber	1:24.205	88
10	Max Chilton	Marussia	1:25.115	67
11	Charles Pic	Caterham	1:26.243	102