Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: For the final day of the pre-season testing we planned an ambitious programme to mirror George’s from yesterday. This involved more data gathering in the early cool track conditions which we achieved very well, followed by some performance experiments and a qualifying simulation before lunch. The long running in the afternoon was unfortunately brought to a halt because a number of critical bodywork parts had reached a stage of degradation that meant that we were no longer learning useful information from the car nor indeed for Robert. So we decided to switch our time to those final race procedural practices (starts, pit stops etc.) that we need to do before Australia.
Having arrived late to the testing, our reliability during the running itself has been incredibly high. Up until today we were on track to complete our originally intended mileage and to consume all available tyre sets. But today this car has become ultimately too tired to continue. In the interest of saving our resources for the important racing in Australia we felt it was right to change the plan. In general, the car is not as its best and this has affected our performance most particularly this morning with Robert in the qualifying simulation and to some extent with George yesterday.
This is an important moment as we finish the pre-season testing to acknowledge the huge effort that has been put in by everybody to design, manufacture and operate this car. The car build and testing itself has required an extremely intense period of more than three weeks working 24×7 by the trackside team. What we have achieved despite our huge challenges is remarkable; well done to the whole team.
Robert Kubica: It is a pity to end testing with a difficult day before we head to the first race. Out of the runs that we did, we managed to learn some things, but it hasn’t given me the level of confidence that I would have liked ahead of Australia. It wasn’t the day that I was hoping for after the delay to the start of testing, but you have to take the positives out of these difficult situations.
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