Buemi breaks Donington testing lap record

The Swiss driver, runner-up in season one by just one point, lapped Donington in 1m31.050s to beat the previous record by 0.033s, which he also held. 

“It was a bit of a scrappy lap, but it’s difficult to do a perfect lap around here,” he said. “I think we could go a second quicker, maybe even into the 1m29s. 

“I’m quite happy but we are really only at the start of the new package. Now we need to work on the details. 

“We could do quite a bit on the car and the car is a bit easier to drive, the stability is better, the brakes are better. I see some good potential, we just need to extract it from the car.”

Sam Bird was second fastest for DS Virgin Racing, lapping just over four tenths slower than Buemi with a 1m31.469s.

“Obviously we did plenty of work before this test so now it’s just a case of fine tuning and refining to make sure everything works 100 per cent for the first race in Beijing,” he said.  

Daniel Abt was third fastest for Abt Schaeffler on 1m31.537s, as he took over from teammate Lucas di Grassi.

Abt said: “For the two days we decided to split the running with Lucas testing on Monday and myself today. It helped us gain more consecutive running and work on set-up changes more easily. 

“These past two days we’ve focused on fixing software issues and mechanical issues and we took a massive step forward from the first day to the second. The car felt good and fast and it feels like we have a good package.”

Some teams hit teething trouble

The Andretti team was out on track, but a series of problems prevented Simona de Silvestro from setting a representative time. Technical issues also hampered NEXTEV TCR and Trulli, which meant that Nelson Piquet Jr, Oliver Turvey and Jarno Trulli were unable to complete any laps.

Ex-F1 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve was slowest of the drivers who did complete a flying lap.