The hydraulic problem encountered by the Virgin mechanics at Jerez was worsened by the team's lack of spare parts through the entire second test at the Spanish track. This being said, the last 4 days of testing scheduled for this winter – at Barcelona, later this week – will be used by Virgin to solve that problem entirely.
Which means the aerodynamic updates scheduled to debut on the VR-01 in Barcelona will not be implemented until after the Bahrain race.
“Despite our best efforts to cure the hydraulic problem, which has beset our entire test, this was simply not achievable with the components that we had available in the field. The specific problem is that we have been losing hydraulic oil at a rate which has limited the number of laps we can achieve on each run and so we look forward to receiving updated parts for the Barcelona test, which we expect to fully resolve the problem,” said the team's technical director Nick Wirth, according to ESPNF1.
“Having said that, we will now need to continue focusing on reliability work when we would have liked to introduce our Bahrain-specification aerodynamic updates. The revised programme means we will be reserving our full set of aero warpaint for the first race,” added Wirth.
Virgin Racing's test in Jerez last week also suffered a slight setback when Brazilian driver Lucas di Grassi lost control of the car on Friday and acquainted himself with the tire barriers. The damage on his car was not severe though, as he resumed action on the track a few minutes after the car was taken into the Virgin garage.
The last test of the off-season kicks off this week, starting Thursday, February 25th, and will last until Sunday, February 28th.
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