The 12
days of testing at Jerez and Barcelona on offer to
Scuderia Ferrari and the other ten teams have gone
quickly. There were six days of running for Felipe
Massa, five for Fernando Alonso and one for Pedro de la
Rosa in just about every kind of weather, except perhaps
the conditions expected in Melbourne on March 17.
They completed a total of 1069 laps of the two Spanish
tracks: 3682km from the last two sessions at the
Catalunya circuit plus a further 1231km in Jerez making
up a total of 4913km. These are the figures that count
for the data analysis that the Scuderia’s engineers have
been carrying out to understand the behaviour of the
F138 – with particular attention paid to the tyres,
which have been designed to provide a better show and,
as a result, the “thrill” of unpredictability.
It was this very point that Pat Fry, Scuderia Ferrari’s
Technical Director, emphasised in his evaluation of this
intense month of testing: “All the teams, ourselves
included, will still have a lot to learn about the tyres
in Melbourne. The performance and the degradation of the
tyres will be the determining factor in establishing how
competitive everyone is. Albert Park is a partial street
circuit – it is only used for racing a few times during
the year – so it will be interesting to see how the
tyres behave in higher temperatures.”
Asked about the comparative performance of the teams,
Fry added: “During these days of testing we have just
concentrated on our own work programme. There are some
quick cars but frankly our attention has been very much
on the work linked to the F138’s development, collecting
data on the new parts that we have brought, especially
in this final test. The positive thing is that our
aerodynamic simulations – both from the wind tunnel and
CFD – have given us the results we had been hoping to
see on the track. You can never have a 100% correlation
but this is an encouraging sign for the new parts that
we aim to bring to the first races, starting in
Melbourne.”
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