Daniil Kvyat completed his pre-season testing programme on Friday, with the Russian feeling it was a productive day at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya as he completed one hundred and sixty laps.
The Scuderia AlphaTauri driver says everyone can be happy with the amount of work the team has done across the testing schedule, with Kvyat and team-mate Pierre Gasly completing seven hundred and sixty-nine laps between them across the six days.
Kvyat did have one minor issue towards the end of the morning session but the team was able to fix the problem during the lunch break, meaning he was able to resume his scheduled programme across the final four hours of the test.
“It was a very productive day, we completed many laps and we can be happy with the work that we’ve done,” said Kvyat. “We’re still understanding and learning a lot about the car each time we are on track, so we will analyse all of the data from today, put it all together and come up with the best package for the first race in Australia.
“The issue we had earlier in the day on my fastest lap cost me a couple of tenths of a second, but we managed to fix that quickly between the sessions which meant the afternoon ran to plan.”
“We can now be fully focused on the coming season” – Jody Egginton
Jody Egginton, the Technical Director at AlphaTauri, agreed with Kvyat that the final day in Spain was a productive one, although their focus now turns to the new season and turning the data they’ve gathered across the six days into positive adaptions to the AT01.
Egginton was pleased that the small issue that cost them some time at the end of the Friday morning session was solved in time for the afternoon session, which allowed Kvyat to complete more of the planned programmes the team had still outstanding.
“The track conditions overall improved this morning compared to yesterday, which in itself provided some useful data,” said Egginton. “The morning programme was executed as planned, however, the final runs in the session were slightly compromised as we were managing a small issue which we easily resolved over the lunch break.
“In the afternoon session, we continued to gather a lot of useful data which will feed into the development and correlation process. We learned more about how the car and tyres behave during longer runs and we completed this part of the programme using a couple of the available compounds.
“We also managed to finish some of the outstanding test items on the final runs of the day which was useful. Overall, today’s running has been productive along with the entire winter test, and with the amount of mileage covered and all the data collected, we can now be fully focused on the coming season.”
