Throughout the 7 days of testing so far, in Valencia and Jerez, Ferrari has been constantly battling for the top positions in the timing reports, in addition to not having experience any problems with their 2011-spec challenger. However, Alonso argues that mileage, rather than performance, is being targeted for these first few tests, so a comparison is too early to be made between his car and its rivals.
“There is not much time to prepare,” said Alonso. “I think in three days' time we are in Barcelona ready for the test. We will keep focused to make the car very strong, to make more than 100 laps every day – that's the target.”
“To see performance of the car and to evaluate how competitive we are, we need to do it Sunday after the first race in Bahrain. Then we will say the car is good or the car is not so good. Until that point, our efforts are made to make the car strong. All the little problems that you can find in tests, the temperatures, whatever, this is the time to solve them,” he added.
After scoring the second best time of the Saturday running, Alonso ended the Jerez meeting with a 3rd place performance yesterday, more than one second off the pace of Williams' Rubens Barrichello. However, the Spaniard spent the whole day doing long stints with a fuel-heavy F150th Italia, and admitted that he tried out several solutions by which Ferrari will try to tackle tire degradation this year.
“It's true that we found every day some new solutions we need to analyze. But obviously I will not tell you which tires I used for which run,” added the Ferrari-an.
Google News