Virgin Racing Jerez test II notes day three

Day three of this week's test saw Lucas di Grassi back in the VR-01 for Virgin Racing. Finally the wet weather in Jerez subsided, however no sooner had the team embarked on an intensive list of testing items than an earlier hydraulic issue ...

Day three of this week's test saw Lucas di Grassi back in the VR-01 for Virgin Racing. Finally the wet weather in Jerez subsided, however no sooner had the team embarked on an intensive list of testing items than an earlier hydraulic issue resurfaced and the team were forced to spend much of the day troubleshooting the problem in the garage rather than making the most of this opportunity for much-needed dry track time. Lucas completed just 34 laps and as a result he ended the day 10th out of the 11 cars on track today.

Nick Wirth, Technical Director of Virgin Racing, commented: "After being delayed by a small spin this morning on a drying track, we ran through some critical race-related procedures which we haven't had time to get to so far during testing. Once the track had completely dried, we started our performance work but we were again frustrated by a reoccurrence of one of our known hydraulic issues. This stopped Lucas from doing more than a handful of flying laps and then finally prevented any more meaningful running, so he didn't get up to speed today. The hydraulic issue caught us out on the first day of this test and since Wednesday we've been forced to run conservatively until a new solution is available for the Barcelona test. We'll try and put some more fixes in place tonight to allow us to get some more laps in tomorrow. We're very aware that Lucas has had very little running so far and we hope to improve things so he can get more seat time at the Barcelona test next week."