Felipe Massa Bahrain test notes 2009-02-10

Balance at Bahrain

Sakhir, 10th February - A positive outcome at the end of the first day of the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro's test sessions at the Sakhir circuit in Bahrain, together with two other teams: BMW and Toyota.

The first driver on the track was Felipe Massa. The Brazilian started the day with setup work on his car, to find the best possible settings for his start to dedicate himself later in the afternoon to some mileage tests with a series of quite long runs (with 15 laps each). At the end Felipe had completed 98 laps or around 530 kilometres.

The Ferrarista's fastest lap was 1.33.615, the second fastest time of the day, behind Glock (1.33.501), but ahead of Kubica (1.33.702). This shows how even the balance of power is distributed on the track amongst the teams here at Sakhir.

"I'd say that it was a positive start of this test session. We drove many kilometres, driving with continuity and we could quickly find a very good setup for the car," Felipe said at the end of the day. "I'm especially satisfied with the constant lap times in the afternoon, when we drove some pretty long stints. But it's still far too early to understand where we are compared to our competitors. And there's still a lot of work to do to improve the car's behaviour.

The Ferrari F60 today on the track in Bahrain was the same used during the tests at Mugello in January. The main goal of the day was to finally drive it under stable track conditions and similar temperatures the teams will have during the races to test the car's reliability and to get to know the slicks. As far as the reliability is concerned today's main problem was an electronic anomaly, which didn't allow the use of the KERS, which remained deactivated over the whole day.

The tests will proceed tomorrow with Felipe behind the wheel. As of Thursday Kimi Raikkonen will continue developing the car.

-credit: ferrari