A cracking water pipe was responsible for the relatively low amount of running that Team Lotus managed on Day 3 of the Barcelona test.
Jarno Trulli still managed to completed 48 laps however, and is happy about the potential of the new T128.
“Despite some mechanical gremlins which cut short my running time today we managed to collect some good data and overall I have a good feeling about the car,” the Italian commented. “It's good to see that without doing many miles, and it being my first day in the car today on the new tyres in Barcelona, I managed to do some consistently good lap times throughout the end of the afternoon session.
“All in all it's been a very positive day and it's great to see we're getting closer to the top. It gives me a lot of confidence and gives the whole team encouragement to keep pushing forward.”
Chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne explained the nature of today’s problem and indicated that it had still been a relatively productive day for the team.
“A slightly frustrating day as our running was limited by a problem with a cracking water pipe this afternoon,” he said. “We knew about the problem but did not have spare parts for it so we had to use parts repaired at the circuit. The team did a good job today to make sure Jarno could get more laps done in the dry conditions and he was fairly happy with the car by the end of the day.
“We also managed to do a reasonable amount of running in the wet so although it was one of those quite tough days we managed to make fairly decent progress and with new parts available tomorrow we will look to complete some more significant mileage.”
