By Ian Lockwood
February 14 2006

Red Bull Racing today kicked off their test session at a sunny Valencia circuit. Robert Doornbos was driving the original RB1-01 chassis, whilst Christian Klien had the honour of shaking down the latest incarnation of the Red Bull Racing 2006 car.

At the 4,005 km long Spanish track, Robert lapped some ninety laps in the older version of the 2006 car, as his teammate Christian Klien got a very nice gift in the shape of the latest version of the RB2 car (RB2-02) fitted with new aerodynamic configuration parts.

ROBERT DOORNBOS: “I’ve seen a lot of smiles in the team today, as the RB2-02 made an impressive debut. The revised chassis and new aero parts not only make the car go much faster but we’ve also got our heating issues under control.”

With cold temperatures in the morning session, Robert was able to do some long runs of at least eight laps each in which he and his engineer mainly concentrated on the set-up of the car and the dampers. After that, both the track- and air temperature raised considerably during the course of the day, so Robert focussed on short runs in the afternoon session. In these runs Robert did some systems checks and practised some starts.

ROBERT DOORNBOS: “Last week in Silverstone we already practised some starts and pitstops, but with a higher griplevel it feels quite different this time. Running the system checks also proved to be very interesting. The team came up with all kinds of electronical solutions which you can fall back to once you suffer from a puncture or an error while on track. I’ll finish my programme with the RB2-01 tomorrrow morning and, with all the happy faces I’ve seen here today, I already look forward to test the RB2-02 in Barcelona next week!”

Christian completed 100 laps in the new chassis, posting the second fastest time of the day in the process.