Cosworth ready for final pre-season F1 test in Barcelona

Cosworth was further buoyed by the performance of its CA2010 engine during last week's four-day test session at the Circuito de Jerez in southern Spain, in spite of the intermittent and often heavy rain that blighted the opening days. This was the third of four official pre-season tests, and followed an encouraging track debut by the Cosworth engine in Valencia and the first Jerez test.

This latest test came to an end last Saturday with three of Cosworth's customer teams accumulating valuable mileage on a dry track. AT&T Williams, Virgin Racing and Lotus Racing were all present in Jerez over the four days with the Lotus-Cosworth T127 making its track debut.

The Jerez test also saw the return of Cosworth power to the head of the timesheets as the Williams FW32 of Rubens Barrichello topped the wet session on Thursday. Although lap times were largely unrepresentative given the varying track conditions and set-ups adopted by each of the teams participating in the session, Cosworth was able to derive satisfaction from the continued reliability from its V8 engine during the session and from the performance of the CA2010 as part of the overall chassis-engine package with all three of its teams.

Teams are looking forward to drier conditions in Barcelona this week as pre-season comes to a conclusion with four days of running scheduled at the Circuit de Catalunya from Thursday. Cosworth will again be represented by AT&T Williams, Virgin Racing and Lotus Racing, and with Thursday and Friday forecast to be dry and sunny prior to the return of more rain at the weekend, this may be the best opportunity for dry weather testing ahead of the opening race of the Formula 1 season in Bahrain on 14 March.

General Manager of Cosworth's F1 Business Unit Mark Gallagher: "Last week's test in Jerez was rather curtailed by the atypically wet Spanish weather. From Cosworth's point of view, it was a good four days in Jerez with a total of three teams on track. This gave us a great opportunity to pool even more data from the CA2010 across three different chassis-engine packages. Reliability continued to be good and in line with our expectations. AT&T Williams put in the most laps of any team during the test, amassing over 450 laps, which is in excess of 2,000kms. Lotus also enjoyed a solid first test with the T127 while Virgin Racing continued to make progress with the VR-01. Barcelona should offer us an even better insight into where we all are in overall performance terms."