Mars Rover's lack of pre-flight testing

Prior to its troubles on Mars, Spirit was being put through its paces -- doing things that were not tested with as much vigor here at JPL before being launched.

Spirit does not have a huge track record of testing, a source said, for fear of damaging the robot and not meeting an unforgiving launch window.[Space.com]

OK, let me get this straight. They were afraid that the operations they planned to do on Mars might lead to "damaging the robot." So they don't test them, and just sent the thing straight to Mars.

Does anyone else see a problem in reasoning there? I mean, there really was, as far as I know, very little that has happened on Mars that was strange or unexpected (like falling off a 5-foot cliff or something). All the rover really did was roll off the lander and roll to a rock, and then test it with its instruments. And we're saying that Nasa thought that testing such operations in a realistic way might "damage" the robot?

Suppose it was true that doing those operations would damage the robot. Does it make sense to wait until the robot is on Mars, where no human hands are available to fix it, to find that out? Or would it make more sense to find that out here on Earth?

If they didn't have time to do that kind of testing (and the subsequent repairing of any problems that emerged) somebody is guilty of some really poor planning.