The BMW Sauber team completed two intense 4 twenty-four hours test sessions in Sakhir Bahrain this past calendar month with some great development. Bahrain wasn't in the schedule at that fourth dimension, but because of poor conditions in the previous session in Jerez and the lack of test time available, BMW Sauber, Ferrari, and Toyota elected to jet off to Bahrain.

The first days of testing belonged to Robert Kubica yet it wasn't pelting and common cold in Jerez, information technology started with fog which delayed the start of 24-hour interval one by 2 hours. Later on that, information technology was a fairly productive day.

nick heidfeld bahrain 09 02 17

The next 2 days were a fiddling different when a sand tempest blew in, stayed, and covered everything in a layer of sand. With sand blowing just near everywhere these 2 days were right-offs with only a minimal number of laps run. Day two Kubica clocked 22 laps and day iii only an installation lap.

Once the sand storm blew off and the track cleared, weather was simply about perfect and now with Christian Klien at the bike serious work began. The focus was a lot of set-up work and working with dissimilar tire compounds through 125 laps. The next mean solar day with Klien once again at the wheel, more set-up work was done and 131 laps completed.

The weather held for the rest of the sessions and Nick Heidfeld took the wheel for a lot of work. His first mean solar day involved set-up work again, evaluating tire compounds and some simulated race starts. What he didn't expect to be testing was the on board fire extinguisher. When a kill switch cut off the primary electronic control unit unexpectedly the burn extinguisher let go sending him to the pits for a clean and mayhap a new racing accommodate.

It'due south very difficult to get a experience for testing when we really don't know exactly what has been accomplished and how the car is responding. Exam times are completely irrelevant and the teams are pretty tight lipped when around the media. That said, the BMW Sauber team is very up shell and looking forrard to Melbourne this month.

Willy Rampf – BMW Sauber Technical Coordinator

"Although we lost some time due to a sandstorm last week, the long test in Bahrain was very productive. We could piece of work with the cars in temperatures we would not have encountered in Europe at this fourth dimension of the year, making it good preparation for the start races of the upcoming flavour."

"Nosotros worked mainly on the general set up-up of the BMW Sauber F1.09, trying numerous solutions on the mechanical and aero side of the car equally well as gaining experience with the three bachelor tyre compounds. Nosotros as well made good progress with KERS. Overall we reached our target of collecting every bit much data as possible near the car's reactions to changes in the set-up."

The team has come out of the gate this winter prepare and fully prepared with their winter game plan working flawlessly. Getting started on the F1.09 early in the 2008 season with a clear direction and very constructive test sessions has many F1 journalists praising the team equally alee of everybody on preparation for the 2009 season which is now less than a month away.

Today is day ii of testing back in Jerez and one time again weather in the grade of rain is having an impact on everybody. BMW Sauber will be testing with just about every other team through until Thursday and I will sum upwardly this session once information technology's done.

This commodity was written by Stew, a talented and passionate author for BMWF1blog , the largest BMW Sauber F1 related blog.