Kvyat mistake tarnishes his Red Bull debut

After a successful track debut for the Red Bull RB11 on Sunday in the hands of Daniel Ricciardo, day two at the first pre-season F1 test Jerez was less profitable as an early morning off for new recruit Daniil Kvyat led to a damaged front wing.

As a result of time pressure to ready the RB11 for the first test, no replacement was available and the team was restricted to running systems checks until a late afternoon shower effectively ended meaningful running for the day.

“It was not ideal today, sometimes mistakes happen and there’s nothing you can do about them,” said Kvyat of his off-track moment. “After that we tried to maximise our day, not having spare parts to replace the wing. We still maximised our running with what we had and hopefully we can recover from that. I have another day to make up for it, so just looking forward to Wednesday now.”

Head of race engineering Guillaume Rocquelin added: “A small off for Dany right at the start of running resulted in a damaged front wing. As with everybody else the pressure to get the car ready on time for this test meant that we didn’t have a replacement here.”

“However, there are plenty of routine checks that need to be done, systems checks that go on all the time in the background, so we could at least get through a lot of that work today, which is why we sent Dany out for some laps without recording a time. A replacement wing will arrive overnight and hopefully it’ll be full speed ahead again [Tuesday].”