Could Renault be the dark horse of the 2002 season? Jarno Trulli set the fastest time at a Barcelona test session on Tuesday. The Italian drove his R202 in qualifying trim to record a best lap of 1m17,761s – just a few tenths slower than the quickest time set at the track in testing by McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen.
Could Renault be the dark horse of the 2002 season? Jarno Trulli set the fastest time at a Barcelona test session on Tuesday. The Italian drove his R202 in qualifying trim to record a best lap of 1m17,761s – just a few tenths slower than the quickest time set at the track in testing by McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen.
The Renault team, which was still known as Benetton in 2001, will not have to do much better in 2002 to improve on last season’s performance. Last year, Giancarlo Fisichella proved that the innovative 110 degree Renault V10 was competitive – at least in the latter half of the season. But, the team had very few results to show for their efforts.
Could the latest burst of speed from the blue-and-yellows be a taste of what’s to be expected of the French team in the 2002 F1 world championship?
"I’m really happy with the amount of work we managed to get through today," Trulli said on Tuesday. "Before I knew the potential of the car, but could never do lots of laps because of niggling problems. I’m so happy with the handling of the car and I’m just beginning to learn how to get the best from the tyres. There’s more to come."
“We had an extremely productive day, probably the best since beginning testing at the start of January,” the team’s technical director Mike Gascoyne said. “Jarno completed a number of long runs in the morning, and managed to conduct both setup work and tyre development for Michelin.
Overall, he was very pleased with the car’s behaviour. Fernando continued working in the B201, and led a series of important software tests.”
Arrows Cosworth’s Enrique Bernoldi was an encouraging second fastest, albeit two seconds slower than Trulli. The Brazilian worked on the set-up of the car, but his test was cut short when the A23 he was driving suffered an hydraulics leak.
It was a frustrating day for Jordan. reported that both cars developed a recurring technical problem that caused the drivers to lose drive a lap or so into a run. This limited Giancarlo Fisichella to 38 laps, while Japanese team-mate Takuma Sato, who had planned to run a race distance, did just 23.
The Italian driver focused his efforts on aerodynamic development and general set-up work throughout the morning, then the team spent most of the afternoon resolving a small systems problem with the car. However, by the time the session came to a close, his engineers were optimistic about the progress made to date, the report said.
Meanwhile, Michael Schumacher broke the lap record at Fiorano for the second time in three days on Tuesday. The Ferrari ace produced a best lap of 58,378s – which is three tenths quicker than his previous best, which was recorded at the weekend.
The F-2002 has proved to be far more reliable than the team had expected at the time of the car’s launch. The world champion covered 43 laps without problems, indicating that there is an increasing likelihood that the F2002 will be raced at the opening grand prix of the season in Australia.
Schumacher will today join team-mate Rubens Barrichello at Mugello, where the Brazilian has been busy testing last year’s car, setting a mark of 1m23,065s.
