Perez takes the wheel for second day of pre-season testing as gearbox issue cuts running short for Red Bull

Oracle Red Bull Racing continued their pre-season running in Barcelona today with Sergio Perez behind the wheel, who put in a best time of 1:21.430. Perez’s final lap tally for the day was 78 laps, as he was interrupted by a gearbox issue which prompted the week’s first red flag. 

“We took some good learnings from today and I’m pleased with that. We are trying some very different things and we have a lot of information to work through, so I think in the meetings it is important to go in-depth and give the engineers as much feedback as possible. The issue with the gearbox took a little bit longer to fix than we expected, but it is fine, it’s expected that these things happen at testing. I’ll be back in the car tomorrow and I hope the weather stays dry,” Perez said. 

Head of Race Engineering Guillaume Rocquelin said Perez’s reports mirrored that of teammate Max Verstappen, who completed the most laps of any driver yesterday at 147. With concurring driver feedback, Rocquelin is optimistic about the team’s direction as the set-up continues to be fine-tuned.

“Checo got up to speed pretty quickly this morning and his feedback is pretty much the same as Max’s, which means we know where we are going and everything is fairly settled. Every time the car comes back to the garage we’re making changes and fine-tuning the direction so, all in all, I’m happy.” 

Rocquelin said the gearbox problem was not cause for alarm for Red Bull, which isn’t expected to have any bearing on the team’s work moving forward. 

“We had a small issue today, which meant we lost around half a day’s running but we aren’t particularly worried about the problem itself, it is just a pain that we lost that time. However, it shouldn’t affect things in the long-term, as we have a solid platform and we’re happy with the progress we’re making.”