24/01/2013
NEWS STORY
Ferrari has revealed that Felipe Massa and Pedro de la Rosa will driver the new Ferrari at the first of the pre-season tests, Fernando Alonso not making his debut in the 2013 car until Barcelona two weeks later.
Massa will begin work on development of the new car on Tuesday February 5 at Jerez de la Frontera until the Friday when he will hand over to Pedro de la Rosa, the Spaniard making his debut at the wheel of a Ferrari.
In the meantime and throughout all the first part of February, Alonso will intensify his physical training, in preparation for a first part of the season. The Spaniard will get behind the wheel of the fourth car of his Ferrari career for the first time on February 19 at Montmelo. He will drive for three days before handing over to Massa.
The final test session, also at Montmelo (February 28 to March) will Massa and Alonso take turns on track: Thursday and Saturday for the Brazilian, Friday and Sunday for the Spaniard.
De la Rosa is in Maranello today (Thursday) for a seat fitting to fine tune his position in the cockpit of the new car. He has had a series of meetings with the team's engineers to define his programme on the simulator, which will constitute the major part of his role as test driver.
This means that his day on track on 8 February will be very important, as it will allow both the team and the driver to work specifically on looking at the correlation between the virtual and the real experience - a move predicted by Christian Klien in his latest feature for Pitpass.
The work of assembling the new car goes on: yesterday the engine was fired up for the first time.