Satisfaction and caution. Mattia Binotto continues to sway between these two concepts: competitiveness is always a pleasure, as long as it is found when it counts. The Montmeló tests said something, but certainly not all, about the strength of Ferrari in relation to the competition. There is happiness for the mileage and the absence of problems, factors that have allowed the men of the Cavallino to work in peace and understand the behavior of the newborn F1-75. However, enthusiasm must be contained pending more indicative responsesas will the Bahrain tests in two weeks.
“Fulfilled? Yes, that’s the right word. We are collecting a lot of data, we have been shooting continuously, I must say that the car performs well compared to how we had conceived, designed and designed it. For now, as a first step, we are satisfied, knowing that there is still a lot to discover, learn and improve. I think it’s still very early to judge the performance. There are teams that perhaps hide more than others, some a little less. We will see him at the next tests in Bahrain and in the first races. They are such different machines that it will take a few races to see everyone’s true potential“Ferrari team principal told reporters. “I understand that the fans have a lot of hopes, and we who are the first fans have as many, but it really is too early to judge. The feedback from the drivers is good, they tell us that the car responds well in terms of driveability and balance. It is a good starting point, but there is still a long way to go“.
Binotto then went all-out, touching on all the various themes of this three-day Catalan: “Anything unexpected? I would say above all the hopping on the straights, it is a common theme of all the teams. It is the result of the aerodynamic instability of the bottom which is generated at very high speed. You don’t see it in the wind tunnel because we are limited to certain speeds by regulation, and this phenomenon happens at higher speeds. It’s a unexpected problem but not that serious. It works out quite well, we have mitigated it these days and we are shooting in much more stable conditions than on the first day. I was surprised to see very different machines and still quite similar performances. When we see such radically different solutions of conceptual choices we expect to see them on the track as differences in performance, instead they are cars that will converge in performance even if all in all they are very different in form. As for the development, at the beginning of the season we will try to make the most of the car. We will make some small but not radical changes, at the beginning we will focus on the maximum performance of the current car. We want to understand the pace, and to do that we must all run on equal terms, which we have not done. However, I expect the others to bring a lot of updates. In terms of kilometers we did a lot of laps and it was important, because the cars are very different and so we had to first of all learn them in all conditions. Until now we have collected a lot of data and now we are going to correlate it with the ones we got from the simulator, which we will focus on in the coming days. The machine is performing well, so we don’t expect big problems in this correlation. When we go to Bahrain I think we will all do a lot of race simulations also because we will be very close to the first race of the season. We will try to make the most of the car’s potential and therefore the performance differences of the various cars will be clearer“.
A few words also about the cancellation of the Grand Prix of Sochi: “We met yesterday and decided that under these circumstances it was wrong to go to Russia. Let’s look ahead and see what happens. We ourselves have Kaspersky as a partner, but it is a global company: we are monitoring the situation and will discuss with our partnersbut for now there is nothing to worry about“.
#Binotto #teams #hide #FormulaPassionit