Carlos Sainz was happy with his first running of the new STR12 despite small issues that kept him in the garage for parts of the day.
Sainz completed 51 laps on day one of testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and is happy that he is back in a Formula 1 car.
“I end the day with a positive feeling after my first outing at the wheel of the STR12,” Sainz said.
“Everything felt good and I’d say we’ve made a big step forward compared to last year in terms of downforce and grip – I felt it straight away during the first laps of the morning and it put a smile on my face.
“Of course it wasn’t the smoothest of days and we would’ve liked to complete more laps, but you know that this is always going to happen on the first day testing a brand new car.
“All in all, a decent first day and it’s great that the season has finally kicked-off!”
Aerodynamic work and basic reliability testing was the main aim of the day’s running for the Italian-based team.
With such drastic changes to the regulations and only eight days running, it is imperative that teams ensure they are reliable above all else, performance runs are not at the top of the agenda.
Toro Rosso’s technical director James Key added: “It’s good to finally get started after such a long winter, completing 51 laps.
“Although we had to stop a little bit earlier with a bit of a niggle on the front of the car, we will get this sorted for tomorrow.
“The main priorities today were to get miles on the car and to do the basics right, so we did some aero work in the morning and after that we went through a long list of basic checks on our new car, considering there are so many things to learn.”
“The driver feedback has been close to expectation and generally quite positive so I think that, for a first day of testing and although we would’ve liked to do more laps, we can’t complain at all.
“We didn’t do any performance running – that will come later on.”
Comments.
Loading comments…