Rigon and Massa round off 'positive test' for Ferrari
The curtain has come down on the Young Driver Test at Silverstone, which saw ten of the Formula 1 teams entered for the Formula 1 World Championship taking part with a variety of drivers, some young prospects, some older.
For Scuderia Ferrari, Felipe Massa was the race driver in action at the English track, testing the new Pirelli compounds, along with Davide Rigon, a car development driver for the Scuderia since 2011. The Brazilian did 69 laps, setting the sixth fastest time of the day in 1.33.624. Rigon was back in the Ferrari cockpit in the afternoon, to continue the programme of aerodynamic testing which he had started on Wednesday. He was fifth fastest in a time of 1.33.592, having done 20 laps.
“It seems to me these tyres work better, at least compared to what we saw in the race here” said Felipe Massa at the end of his session. “Over the three days, no one had any problems and from the safety aspect, this is the most important thing. The prototype Hard seemed maybe too hard to race on. I think that in the coming Grands Prix we could head towards a choice of the softer compounds, because they can work at lower temperatures and last longer. Temperature has a significant effect on our car and here for the race for example, it did not help us, but let’s see what happens in Hungary, where we can expect hotter conditions. You need a lot of aerodynamic downforce there and let’s hope we can find the right solutions to be competitive”.
“The past three days have been positive, as I didn’t make any mistakes and I learned a lot” commented Davide Rigon, at the end of the day. “I hope that all the work will have given the team some useful data, maybe some that can be used to prepare for the upcoming races. Again today, we were not concerned with lap times, nor did we make big changes. Instead, we concentrated on adapting the set-up to the new tyres. Now this information will be passed on to our colleagues at the simulator. I think this test has been very useful for my work and also my personal experience, even though I don’t see it as finite, neither for me nor the car because there are no limits to improvement”.
