• Jerez Test, Day Three

Red Bull cuts another day of Jerez test short

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Red Bull has ended another session of testing early after three nightmare days of struggling with the reliability of the new RB10.

The team completed just three laps on Thursday, the first of which only carried Daniel Ricciardo as far as Turn Seven before the car pulled up with smoke coming from the rear. It follows two unproductive days for the team with more than one problem on the car.

On Wednesday Renault Sport accepted some responsibility for the lack of running due to a problem with the batteries in its energy recovery system, but the team is struggling with other issues specific to its car.

Race Engineering Co-ordinator Andy Damerum said: "We worked hard yesterday to make the changes it was felt were necessary to overcome the problems we identified and we were hopeful of a more successful day today. Unfortunately, the measures we took only partially solved the issue and, as with yesterday, it's more sensible to stop and dig deeper into finding a solution.

"It's obviously not where we want to be and naturally the whole team is frustrated by these issues. However, we're pretty good at bouncing back from this type of thing. This is where the whole team pulls together and I'm sure we will get these problems fixed."

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner and technical director Adrian Newey left the circuit with roughly two hours of running remaining on Thursday. Ricciardo later confirmed Newey had gone back to base to work on solutions.

"Adrian's gone back to the drawing board, definitely. For now there's only so much they can do at the track and I think for Adrian he's pretty happy working in his office back in Milton Keynes. He will definitely be getting involved and just trying to sort out the next best step."

Laurence Edmondson is deputy editor of ESPNF1

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