Weather Forecast Suggest Rain Will Hit Jerez Test Next Week

The teams that preferred to skip the maiden test meeting of the winter in Valencia – at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit – in order to further develop their 2010 single-seaters are now looking at the prospect of having even less than 12 days to prepare their cars for the season opening round in Bahrain.

The FIA scheduled only 15 days of testing for the month of February for the development of the 2010 single-seaters, but only 7 of the 13 teams on this season's entry list made the first one, in Valencia. Consequently, only 12 days of testing remained to be used by the other teams, some of them already confirming launch dates prior to next week's Jerez meeting.

Red Bull Racing, Force India, Virgin Racing and Lotus F1 Team are to debut their cars in Jerez, but the weather forecasts for the second part of next week at the Spanish track are not very optimistic. Specifically, it seems that rain will influence the majority of testing at Jerez.

Consequently, that would leave the aforementioned F1 teams with only 8 days of testing for the remainder of the off-season calendar, with another meeting scheduled still at Jerez for the following week, and the last on at Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya. Which means less time to prepare the car for the 2010 season and less adjustments brought to its aerodynamic package.

From all the teams mentioned before, Red Bull Racing will likely be the most affected, as the Milton Keynes based team is regarded as a title contender in 2010. The RB6 is regarded as a more competitive incarnation of its predecessor RB5 model, which last year won 6 grands prix and took Red Bull to the runner-up in the standings.