Button got another day

Jenson Button and McLaren picked themselves up after the problems they had on their first day in Jerez. On the second day, the Briton set the fastest lap time, 1: 24.165.

The track in Jerez was soaked with rain overnight, so Pirelli decided to carry out mandatory testing of rain tires from this year, which is scheduled for Friday. As the rain did not wet the track enough, it was additionally wetted with a tank and Pirelli was able to offer the teams new rain tires that drain 65 liters of water per second, unlike the old rain tires that drained up to 60 liters.

The track was completely dry in the afternoon, and by then Mercedes racer Nico Rosberg had accumulated the most kilometers - as much as 97, which is more than all the racers collected on the first day of testing.

Unlike the Mercedes racer, however, Renault’s motorcycle buyers drove a total of just 19 laps. Eight of them were collected by Sebastian Vettel in the new Red Bull RB10, and then he was tempted by the electricity storage system. The rest of the laps were contributed by Caterham racer Marcus Ericsson, but he soon stopped on the track with the same problems as Vettel. Toro Rossa racer Danil Kvyat had the least luck, not being able to drive out of the garage at all.

Of the eight racers who recorded the time, Button was the fastest in the end to test McLarn’s MP4-29 for the first time. Kimi Raikkonen, who was the fastest yesterday, was six tenths of a second slower and finished second. Third was another Finn Valtteri Bottas, who was half a second behind his compatriot Raikkonen.

Rosberg was the only one to devote himself to longer sets of laps, so it’s no surprise that his best time was only the fourth best. The German was faster than Sergio Perez in Force India, who ended the test day prematurely when his VJM07 race car stopped in the first corner due to technical problems.

Esteban Gutierrez was almost five seconds behind his compatriot Perez, but he was only faster than Vettl and Ericsson.