KERS Failure Stops Ferrari's Test Session in Barcelona

Kimi Raikkonen might have topped yesterday's testing session at Barcelona, but Ferrari were certainly not very content with the car's development on Tuesday. The Finnish driver focused much of his yesterday morning testing on running several setups, after which he was scheduled to run a full qualifying simulation on the Circuit de Catalunya track.

Shortly after starting the simulation, however, the Ferrari F60 encountered a problem with its Kinetic Energy Recovery System and had to park to the pits for repairs. It was on Lap 55 when the misfortune happened, as car's KERS unit started losing cooling liquid on track. This is the Scuderia's second KERS-related failure since the beginning of the 2009 testing.

“We had a problem with the KERS' cooling system and we preferred to stop and not risk greater damage. Until then everything went really well. I think that once we've resolved these small problems with the reliability, we can say that we've got a very good package available,” said Raikkonen at the end of the day.

“Sure, I would have liked to make a second race simulation, after the one we've done at Bahrain in February, but it's better that some things happen during the tests and not at a GP,” added the Finish driver. It was in the first 55 laps of the day that Raikkonen scored the fastest time of the Tuesday testing, 1:20.314, as the car never left the pits following the KERS incident.

Being supervised by former Scuderia champion Michael Schumacher, Raikkonen ended his testing experience this winter on top of the F1 pack present in Barcelona. He will be replaced by Felipe Massa for the remaining 2 days of testing this week, after which the Maranello-based team will take a 2-week vacation (from testing, that is) until the season opener in Australia.