Formula 1's winter testing season came to close with McLaren's Lewis Hamilton recording the fastest time at Catalunya. Hamilton set the fastest lap time of 1m20.472s in the morning. Last year's runner-up, Red Bull emerged as Hamilton's closest challenger on raw speed. Mark Webber was just 0.024s behind Hamilton.
At this point all eyes were on Michael Schumacher, however the real sensation of the afternoon was another German, Adrian Sutil who went on a string of qualifying runs and set a superb lap time of 1m20.611s only 0.139s slower than Hamilton.
Force India's pace has been acknowledged even by their rivals. After the close of testing Lewis Hamilton said, "McLaren's biggest rivals are Ferrari (Alonso and Massa ), Red Bull (Vettel and Webber), Mercedes GP (Schumacher and Rosberg), and Force India (Sutil).
After last year's successful performance on low-downforce venues like Spa and Monza will Force India graduate to being a consistent point and podium scorer?
For that we will have to wait till the 5 red lights illuminate at Bahrain on 14th March !!
At this point all eyes were on Michael Schumacher, however the real sensation of the afternoon was another German, Adrian Sutil who went on a string of qualifying runs and set a superb lap time of 1m20.611s only 0.139s slower than Hamilton.
Force India's pace has been acknowledged even by their rivals. After the close of testing Lewis Hamilton said, "McLaren's biggest rivals are Ferrari (Alonso and Massa ), Red Bull (Vettel and Webber), Mercedes GP (Schumacher and Rosberg), and Force India (Sutil).
After last year's successful performance on low-downforce venues like Spa and Monza will Force India graduate to being a consistent point and podium scorer?
For that we will have to wait till the 5 red lights illuminate at Bahrain on 14th March !!
Testing times from Barcelona (Sunday 28 February)
1 HAMILTON McLaren 1m20.472s (134)
2 WEBBER Red Bull 1m20.496s (59)
3 MASSA Ferrari 1m20.539s (105)
4 SUTIL Force India 1m20.611s (99)
5 VETTEL Red Bull 1m20.667s (76)
6 SCHUMACHER Mercedes 1m20.745s (122)
7 BARRICHELLO Williams 1m20.870s (83)
8 KOBAYASHI Sauber
9 BUEMI Toro Rosso 1m22.135s (87)
10 KUBICA Renault 1m23.175s (106)
11 KOVALAINEN Lotus 1m25.251s (65)
11 DI GRASSI Virgin 1m26.160s (47)
