Ferrari Hails Perfect KERS Development

The conclusions reached by the Ferrari technical bosses after the maiden testing of the F60 at Mugello are nothing but optimistic. Chief engineer Chris Dyer – who used to work with driver Kimi Raikkonen as race director until this winter – revealed that everything went according to plan and that Ferrari have done immense progress in developing their KERS unit on track.

However, Dyer admitted that the only part Ferrari need to improve testing on is the usage of slick tires. As they pulled out from the Portimao group test due to negative weather forecast, the Italian team was expecting a more friendly weather back home, at Mugello. However, all 4 days of testing have been affected heavily by rain, so the Ferrari F60 had to be equipped with grooved intermediate tires for wet track.

“As you know, the main new things are essentially three things: aerodynamics, KERS, and slick tires. Regarding the first two everything is going in the best possible way, but unfortunately the latter we haven't been able to verify yet. Surely we can't wait to fit the slick tires on, because only with them we'll know how quick we can be,” said Dyer after the Mugello meeting.

When asked specifically about how the development of KERS went at Mugello, Dyer revealed that they focused more on trying to find out how safe the system really is rather than test its potential. Neither Kimi Raikkonen nor Felipe Massa were allowed to abuse the use of KERS lap after lap. This made the development of the F60 go down a lot smoother.

“In this third day we've just done more than 500 kilometres and everything went positively. There really has been nothing to worry about,” concluded Dyer.