heres the web article, yes the car was protected on the test day by having the throttle wound back a bit, as it was too valuable to have crashed by a rookie trying to prove a point......iniipendednt stop watched had Tommy 0.5sec quicker than Lauda.
http://en.espn.co.uk/f1/motorsport/story/8578.html
But for me, its just a test day, I race karts with my son 3 times per month to a professional MSA/FIA level........the track can easily vary 0.5 seconds from day to day, depending on weather and the previous rubber laid down......but overall the point stands, Tommy was brutally fast........but did he spend weeks setting up the car to be so fast in the first place - no he didnt, could he do the test driving side of it and work his way around problems with the engineers, certainly not, thats why he hated the Theodore people.
Tommy would have just been another Mansell, nobody in Williams or Mclaren has a good word to say about Mansel as he rubbed everyone up the wrong way with his bluntness and poor people skills........hence the likes of Lauda, senna and Prost hoovered up all the WDC's in the 1980's & early 90's