USA: Practice 1 & 2
By Ian Lockwood
June 30 2006
A mechanical problem with his gearbox prevented Robert Doornbos completing serious mileage at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway today. After a fine first practice session, the 24-year old Dutchman only lapped the 4192 meter long track 13 times this afternoon.
While several drivers confined themselves to a single installation lap in this morning’s prelimanary session, Doornbos completed 22 laps at the world’s most famous racetrack. Separated over four runs of about six laps each, Red Bull Racing’s testdriver mainly concentrated himself on finding a good set-up for the RB2. Though Doornbos was among the fastest drivers on the track in the first 45 minutes of the opening session, he could no longer make a fist on a high fuel load and eventually finished tenth with a best laptime of 1:15.018.
As the team had made significant progress in terms of set-up during the lunchbreak, Doornbos was eager to continue his programme. A sudden problem with the gearbox however halted his ambitions. Halfway his second run the team called Doornbos in as a precautionary measure as the data revealed a mechanical failure had occured. With the time being too short to fix the problem, Doornbos only completed 13 laps and finished in 26th position in the afternoon session.
ROBERT DOORNBOS: “Quite a disapointment, but it comes with the game. One can never rule out mechanical trouble for the full 100%, but it’s a shame we lost valuable tracktime today. On the other hand, this is the first time this year I had to take an early shower, so let’s hope it’s also the last time! I will now prepare myself for our upcoming test at Jerez de la Frontera where I will drive next Wednesday and Friday.”
FAST CARS, FAST FOOD
Do you want fries with that sir?
DAVID COULTHARD, "Do I look like a man who eats fries?… I’m not sure how much of the programme Robert was able to get through before he stopped. Without the tyre comparison info, we’ve basically got a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, but at the moment it’s looking quite clear which one we should opt for. We might have lost a little bit of info regarding the car’s set-up, which is one of the things you use the third car for. Other than that, there’s not a great deal to say about the session. We had some oversteer and in trying to balance it out we took out more and more front flap to try and cam it down, but I think we went a little over the top."
1st Practice P-, 2nd Practice P25
Can we super-size you?
CHRISTIAN KLIEN, "There’s no need to be rude about my lack of height… There’s a very long straight in Indy, which is good fun, but the infield is a little slow to drive. I did two runs in the second session and the circuit had very low grip. It was quite difficult to get the balance right and the car had some understeer, so we’ll have to look at what we can do to improve it for tomorrow. I hope we can do a good race for the fans here; last year was a bit of a disaster. But, Michelin is looking after the fans really well and I think they’ve bought a good tyre here, so we should see a very good race on Sunday."
1st Practice P-, 2nd Practice P20
Diet or regular?
ROBERT DOORNBOS, "Full fat regular, maximum all the way, that’s my motto… It didn’t work out too well this morning, as we struggled with the set up of the car. We did our homework in between sessions and I worked with the engineers to try and improve the car, which was important for the long runs in the afternoon. In the second session we started the first long run, but after a couple of laps we had a gear box failure so it was a very short Friday for me. I hope it’s the first and the last!"
1st Practice P10, 2nd Practice P26