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The second
day of official F1 testing at Valencia on Tuesday saw
another positive day's work for Scuderia Ferrari
alongside six other teams with Felipe Massa again
positing the fastest time of the day in the new F10.
The Brazilian
driver continued with development work on the new car,
concentrating mainly on finding the best set up under
various conditions of how the car was used and on analysing
tyre behaviour. Massa covered a total of 124 laps, the
quickest in a time of 1.11.722. Second fastest was Kamui
Kobayashi in the new BMW Sauber C29, which is also powered
by a Ferrari V8 engine; the Japanese youngster turning in 96
laps with a time of 1:12.056. Third best time went to Lewis
Hamilton (McLaren-Mercedes) in 1:12.256, the British driver
covering 108 laps.
It’s too early
to draw any conclusions from this performance, but it’s
still a very good way to start the season and the F10’s
development; it is also a major improvement on pre-last
season when Ferrari was floundering with the uncompetitive
F60. Another very reassuring fact are the kilometres that
have been driven by Massa in two days: 102 laps on Monday
and 125 yesterday, add up to more than 900 kilometres so
far. Furthermore the team reports that there were no
problems at all with the F10’s reliability, confirming the
great work done on the test stands at Maranello over the
last weeks before the single-seater’s debut on the track.
"I’m really
happy, because it has been quite a while I’ve driven so many
kilometres at once,” Massa said at the end of yesterday's
second day. “For me it’s very positive, I feel fine from a
physical point of view, but especially the car has a very
good start. We’re satisfied by the work done up to now:
we’ve been working on the set up and in the afternoon we
started to compare the tyres under different conditions.
With lots of petrol on board the car behaves differently,
but we didn’t experience any surprises. As far as the tyres
are concerned we need to understand well how they work on
other and harder tracks than this here, but especially how
they behave with higher temperatures. Where we’re standing
compared to the others? That’s impossible to say, it’s
really too early!"
During the lunch
break Massa received an unexpected visitor: Michael
Schumacher. The German driver couldn’t resist the Italian
cuisine and wanted to taste a plate of Spaghetti aglio, olio
and peperoncino prepared by the Scuderia’s chef Carmine.
"What we said to each other? Nothing in particular," Massa
said to the journalists with a smile. "We’re friends and
we’re talking quite often to each other: today I think he
was just homesick for our motorhome, because we have the
better food here than anywhere else in the world of Formula
1!"
After the first
steps with the F10 now Massa is back where he also belongs:
to his family. Tonight he will fly back to São Paulo to be
with Felipinho and Raffaela. Massa will be back to Europe
next week, when he will be behind the wheel of the F10 in
Jerez de la Frontera. The Scuderia will continue testing in
Valencia today when Fernando Alonso will make his official
debut at the wheel of a Ferrari Formula 1 car.
Test Details,
02/02/2010 - Circuit: Ricardo Tormo, Cheste – 4.005 km;
Driver: Felipe Massa; Car: Ferrari F10; Weather: air
temperature 5/15 °C, track temperature 6/18 °C. Sunny.
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