Ricciardo records the day’s quickest lap in Barcelona

Infiniti Red Bull Racing’s pre-season preparations went well on day two of the second test of 2015, as Daniel Ricciardo completed 142 laps of the Circuit de Catalunya at the wheel of the RB11. The morning session was given over to a mix of short runs and pit stop practice and shortly before the lunch break Daniel recorded the day’s quickest lap with an outing on Pirelli’s soft tyres that netted a time of 1:24.574s. In the afternoon the team switched to medium and long runs and more tyre evaluation.

Pre-Season Test #2, Barcelona – Day Two

Driver: Daniel Ricciardo
Car: RB11
Laps: 142
Best time: 1:24.574
Circuit length: 4.655km
Fastest Lap: D. Ricciardo (1:24.574)

“It was good. We wanted to get a day with a 100-plus laps on the board and we did that and more today. It was very solid,” said Daniel afterwards. “We also got through some pit stop practice and some good long runs, which is very positive. I know it’s just testing but it is encouraging seeing us on top or at least in that front group.

Obviously you have no idea what everyone is doing, but it is encouraging. The car feels good. It has similar characteristics to RB10 in terms of how the chassis feels but that’s a good thing, as I think we had a pretty good car last year. All in all a really good day’s work.”

Head of Race Engineering Guillaume Rocquelin said: “A good day for the whole team today and a very satisfying follow-up to yesterday. Day one was all about tuning the new elements we had brought here and it was always going to be a bit stop-start but by the end of yesterday we were on top of that and running well and today was the reward for all that hard work.

We had a small issue on Daniel’s installation lap, again caused by a software gremlin, but that was quickly sorted and we could get to work on the programme we had in place. In the morning that meant a lot of pit stop practice first thing, giving way to some tyre work in advance of our afternoon programme. We switched over to long runs in the afternoon and by the close of play we’d got through everything we wanted to on the day.”

Infiniti Red Bull Racing