– the whole team should feel proud”

Date   Wednesday February 22 2012 Driver   Lewis Hamilton Location   Circuit de Catalunya, Barcelona Track length   4.655km Weather Warm and sunny all day. Maximum ambient temperature 16.8°C, maximum track temperature 33.3°CLaps completed   121 Kilometres covered   563kmBest laptime   1m23.806s at 14:22Programme Lewis Hamilton undertook another mile-crunching outing for the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes team, clocking up 121 laps and more than 500km of running during the second day of pre-season testing at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya.

The focus for the morning was on data gathering and set-up evaluation before the team carried out a race-distance simulation in the afternoon.

Lewis said:

“To have completed more than 1000km in the past two days is incredibly encouraging – the whole team should feel proud.

“The car behaves really well in the high-speed corners – I think the baseline of our car is higher than it was last year – and it’s better overall at high-speed. It’s performing well in Turns Three and Nine, too.

“We don’t know the fuel-loads of the other cars, so it’s still hard to determine the pecking order. We didn’t bring any upgrades here, but our understanding of the car has developed since the test in Jerez. We’re learning more about how the tyres work, how the temperatures behave and how to balance the car using set-up. It’s been an extremely productive few days – and I think Jenson will continue to improve the car tomorrow.

“Now, I’m just looking forward to the final test – it’s where you get a really good feeling of where the car will be. It’s also exciting because it’s the last stop before the first race!”

Driver for day three   Jenson Button Duration of test   Four days (February 21-24)