Tom McCullough, the Performance Engineering Director of the Racing Point F1 Team, felt the post-Bahrain Grand Prix test was a positive one for the Silverstone-based outfit as they worked through a number of programmes across the two days.
The final day of the test on Wednesday saw the two race drivers, Lance Stroll and Sergio Pérez, with both doing significant amounts of running, the Canadian finishing eighth and the Mexican second in the final time standings of the day.
McCullough says vital information was learned by the team throughout the test and it was pleasing they could get a better understanding of their RP19 after suffering a disappointing weekend in Bahrain that saw the team score only one point thanks to Pérez’s tenth place.
“Over the last couple of days we have gradually worked our way through a comprehensive job list,” said McCullough. “The rain yesterday deprived us of track time, but we still managed to collect valuable aero data in the morning with various instrumentation fitted to the RP19.
“We continued the aero programme today with Lance before moving our focus to performance and tyre work. Track conditions have been much better today – without the sandy and rainy conditions we experienced on Tuesday – and we made the most of the afternoon to run four different tyre compounds with Sergio.
“We rounded off the test with a series of long runs.”
McCullough was pleased the team were able to get some valuable track time to get a better understanding of the upgraded parts the team has introduced to the RP19 across the opening two races, and he hopes what has been learned can be put into good use in the Chinese Grand Prix later this month.
“The timing of this test has been useful because it’s given us the opportunity to get a better understanding of the new parts we introduced over the last two events and we will put that learning to good use in China,” insisted McCullough.
