Test Team Prepares for Barcelona

By Red Bull Racing
November 23 2006

If you want to upset an F1 test team manager at this time of year, just suggest that they haven’t had any work to do for the past couple of months, what with the last three “flyaway” races of the year and the post-season testing ban.

“You could say that!” laughs Red Bull Racing’s Tony Burrows. “But it’s not true. The last test was at Jerez in September, but since then the test team did some publicity runs in Vienna and before that we did that dawn run in Sao Paolo in the week running up to the Brazilian Grand Prix. From there we went onto Chile to do four runs in Santiago, three of them night time runs under floodlights in a car park surrounded by grandstands and then a final run through the city centre itself. It was good fun but the people got a bit excited, with around 30,000 of them storming the roads trying to chase the race car. It got a bit scary at the end, with a handful of police trying to hold back a crowd of thousands. We had to fight them off with fire extinguishers, as some of them were getting trampled underfoot! Interesting to say the least.”

But let’s get back to the question, what are you doing today? “Getting ready to resume testing, with a session in Barcelona next week,” says Burrows. “From there we go straight to Jerez for a further two weeks, which means we get home just in time for Christmas. Of course, these tests will be carried out using RB2, the 2006 car, so what exactly is the point of running a car that won’t be racing again? “There are some elements that will be carried over to RB3,” explains the ever-patient Burrows. “Things you want to put mileage on and experiment with, but the main reason for this and other forthcoming tests is to run on Bridgestone tyres, which all teams use next year. It means we have a few tests to get used to them, so every lap will count, from long runs to measure tyre degradation to getting a feel for how the tyre changes over a normal race stint. We’re just going to pound round, do as many miles as possible to give our engineers as much tyre data as possible. It’s a whole new ballgame.”

So it must be pretty chaotic in the factory as everyone rushes around to get ready for testing? “No, not at all,” maintains Tony. “Because we are effectively testing with an old car, at this stage in the year, there are plenty of spare parts around, which is usually what you are struggling to find during early season testing. There are loads of people available too, so I am really looking forward to this test and that’s partly because it will be good to work with Mark (Webber) again, as we were together back in the days of Jaguar. That’s another element of these tests; getting Mark back up to speed in terms of learning how we do things.”

Running a tried and tested package, Burrows is hoping that these last sessions of 2006 will not involve the ridiculously long hours that testing is famous for. “If one of the drivers decides to exit stage left at Turn 1 in the last hour of the day, then we could have a busy evening, but there is no major development work going on, so I don’t foresee working that late,” says Burrows hopefully. It would make a nice change to go to bed on the same day that you get up!”

However, there are compensations to spending three weeks in southern Spain in November and December. “We are all well into our paella and our Spanish reading skills are coming on very well,” reckons Tony. “It’s become a home from home and we spend so much time in the same hotels that we know all the staff. It’s a nice place to spend the winter months, with blue skies and temperatures over 20 degrees during the day.”  And they say testing isn’t glamorous!