Felipe Massa Valencia test report 2010-02-02

900 for the F10

Valencia, 2 February 2010 -- Another positive day for the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro working at the test sessions held on the "Ricardo Tormo" circuit in Cheste near Valencia.

Felipe Massa was again the fastest driver on the track with his fastest lap time of 1.11.722. Obviously it's too early to draw any conclusions from this performance, but it's still a very good way to start the season and the F10's development. Another very reassuring fact are the kilometres driven so far: 102 laps yesterday and 125 today add up to more than 900 kilometres so far. Furthermore there were no problems at all with the F10's reliability, confirming the great work done by the team on the test stands over the last weeks before the single-seater's debut on the track.

"I'm really happy, because it has been quite a while I've driven so many kilometres at once," Felipe said at the end of the day. "For me it's very positive, I feel fine from a physical point of view, but especially the car has a very good start. We're satisfied by the work done up to now: we've been working on the set up and in the afternoon we started to compare the tyres under different conditions. With lots of petrol on board the car behaves differently, but we didn't experience any surprises. As far as the tyres are concerned we need to understand well how they work on other and harder tracks than this here, but especially how they behave with higher temperatures. Where we're standing compared to the others? That's impossible to say, it's really too early!"

During the lunch break Felipe received an unexpected visitor: Michael Schumacher. The German driver couldn't resist the Italian cuisine and wanted to taste a plate of Spaghetti aglio, olio and peperoncino prepared by the Scuderia's chef Carmine. "What we said to each other? Nothing in particular," Felipe said to the journalists with a smile. "We're friends and we're talking quite often to each other: today I think he was just homesick for our motorhome, because we have the better food here than anywhere else in the world of Formula 1!"

After the first steps with the F10 now Felipe is back where he also belongs: to his family. Tonight Felipe will fly back to Sao Paulo to be with Felipinho and Raffaela. He will be back to Europe next week, when he will be behind the wheel of the F10 in Jerez de la Frontera.

-source: ferrari