09/02/2012
NEWS STORY
Ferrari technical director Pat Fry tells fans not to pay too much attention to the times the F2012 is posting in pre-season testing.
On the face of it, after one day in the Maranello outfit's 2012 contender, Fernando Alonso is thirteenth quickest overall, with teammate Felipe Massa, after two days in the car, fourteenth, both over 2.7s off the pace.
However, Fry urges fans, and no doubt the team's rivals, not to read too much into this.
"There's no reason for us to take the fuel out and try and do a quick time to make headlines in the newspapers," said the Englishman at the end of today's session. "However, we must try and maximise the limited twelve days of testing available to us.
"We have already lost some valuable time when it snowed in Fiorano," he continued, "on the first day here, Felipe had to do all the work that we could have got through last week, making the most of the opportunity of the promotional filming. With only three tests available, the work has to be more compressed compared to last year and there is a lot of it to get through.
"The base line is good and we are working through everything that has to be tried to find the best balance on the car, especially in the various phases of the various types of corner. The matrix of solutions we are working on is pretty extensive and one can say that, on practically every run, we are trying different configurations. Here and in Maranello, we are working very hard on data analysis and also using the simulator so as to be sure that we can put together the best possible package."
For the first two days of the test there had not been any reliability problems, but today a hydraulic failure meant Alonso lost around ninety minutes of track-time.
"Parts are arriving here from the factory which should prevent this type of problem from reoccurring," said Fry. "From a reliability point of view, the car seems good, as it was in the past. As for performance, I can only say that it is going to take a lot of analysis to put all the pieces of the jigsaw together."
Asked to send out a message to Ferrari fans, the Englishman simply replied: "All of us are working very hard."