Jerez Day 2 – Schumacher tops the times, Caterham racks up the miles

Michael Schumacher topped the time sheets on the second day of pre-season testing at Jerez, Spain. The seven-time World Champion completed 132 laps with a fastest time of 1m18.561s, more than a second faster than yesterday’s quickest lap by Kimi Raikkonen.

Heikki Kovalainen made up for Caterham’s limited running yesterday by completing 139 laps today, more than any other driver. It was a significant day for Caterham, as KERS was used for the first time on the CT01. The team formerly known as Lotus did not use KERS in 2011.

Kovalainen was upbeat, saying: “I feel very happy with the work we have completed today. Yesterday we had a problem that was nothing to do with the car so today was our first real day of testing and we had a trouble free day, completing most of what we wanted to on day one and day two and working through a variety of setup changes. We ran on each of the tyre compounds and I’m really starting to get a feel for the car. Basically it’s good news because it confirms what I thought yesterday. This car is a lot better than the 2011 car, it’s quicker and everything works as we want it to. We’ve made very solid progress and I feel really good physically, so I think there’s a lot more to come.”

The day was mostly without incident. Kimi Raikkonen had a couple of off-track excursions, the first of which brought out the red flag while marshals cleaned gravel off the track. There was only one other stoppage, when some loose concrete was removed from behind a kerb.

Raikkonen entertained with some aggressive driving throughout the day, and Schumacher gave an overtaking masterclass when he ended up behind other cars at several points in the afternoon.

Today was the last day of the first test for HRT, who will bring their 2012 car to the second test in Barcelona in two weeks time. They ran their 2011 car for two days in order to gather data on the new Pirelli tyres. All of the other teams, except Marussia, will be in action again tomorrow morning.

Laptimes for the day are as follows: