Testing Day 3: McLaren Suffer In France

By Sam Cooper
May 17 2007

The team were focusing their attention and work to the Canadian Grand Prix, working on tyre, and setup options for the Montreal race. The team will be testing again tomorrow, and will be testing on the same layout they were testing today; the team’s testing driver Pedro De La Rosa wasn’t able to make a major impact on the time sheets today, which is a real shame.

Pedro not topping the timesheets is just abit worrying, as it would unquestionably give the team an extra push to develop the super quick MP4-22, in aid to help the teams two super fast drivers beat Ferrari to both the drivers, and constructors championships.

Pedro’s fastest time at the end of the day was 0.7 seconds away from the ultimate testing pace which was set by Ferrari driver Kimi Räikkönen, which could be due to Pedro setting his fastest time on the harder tyre, rather than the faster soft tyre. However if McLaren wanted to be on top of the timesheets they would.

After his dreadful Spanish grand prix, Kimi Räikkönen has come under a lot of pressure, from the press and his team, by finishing fastest on top of the timesheets, he has put these suggestions to rest, possibly Kimi’s speed is due to the team sending him on a low fuel run to put his poor performance rules to rest.

The biggest surprise on the circuit was the unbelievable pace of Scudera Torro Rosso, in Scott Speeds hands, he managed to place his STR2 second, which given its lack of pace is very impressive.

Today was mainly uneventful, Kimi Räikkönen yet again had a mechanical problem, and Ferrari’s reliability wasn’t up to their normal standard, the Italian team certainly need to improve their reliability if they want to challenge for the world championship.

Testing times will be shown below.