Sauber's Kobayashi fastest in Barcelona F1 test

Barcelona: Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi was the fastest driver as Formula One’s second pre-season test ended in Barcelona on Friday with the big guns giving little away about who was really the most competitive. The Japanese driver set his best time of one minute 22.312 seconds on soft tyres in practice qualifying before the lunch break, with the team focusing on longer runs in the afternoon. He did a total of 145 laps. “Qualifying was actually a weakness of ours in the last two seasons and we have to resolve this,” said Sauber’s head of track engineering Giampaolo Dall’Ara. “This obviously requires proper practice. [caption id=“attachment_224814” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Sauber F1 driver Kamui Kobayashi of Japan takes a curve during a training session at Circuit de Catalunya. Reuters”]  [/caption] “This lap time now stands as the overall fastest for this week, but of course this doesn’t mean much because proper comparisons are never possible during testing with each team running different programmes.” Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado was second quickest for Williams, completing 134 laps, with Briton Paul di Resta third in a Force India. Jenson Button, Britain’s 2009 world champion, was fourth for McLaren ahead of Brazilian Felipe Massa in the Ferrari and Australian Mark Webber, who completed a full race simulation on Thursday, for champions Red Bull. “We’ve been banging out over 120 laps a day, we haven’t had anything fall off the car this week and that’s a good sign,” McLaren principal Martin Whitmarsh told Britain’s Sky Sports television. “Seriously, it’s been very, very reliable. We’ve just concentrated on our engineering programme. We spent the mornings gathering data, doing tests and not trying to go quick or super-quick and the afternoons doing long runs. “It looks tight,” added Whitmarsh of the battle at the front. “I don’t sense there is any dominant team…Red Bull look strong, Ferrari and Mercedes. “I suspect the big boys at this end (of the paddock) could probably go two or three seconds a lap quicker if they really tried. But that’s not the name of the game. We’re not trying to win the winter world championship.” The final official pre-season test is also in Barcelona next week, with the season starting in Australia on March 18. Reuters