Gearbox Problems for Ferrari in Bahrain

Ferrari seems to be having a lot of problems with their F60 model lately. Following the Kinetic Energy Recovery System failure experienced by Kimi Raikkonen during the morning testing on Tuesday, the Scuderia had to cut their Wednesday mileage to half (at least during the morning session) due to a gearbox problem on the 2009 challenger.

Felipe Massa took over from teammate Raikkonen in the F60 cockpit this morning, but his testing session received a blow after only 4 laps on the Sakhir circuit. He was called to the pits immediately due to a gearbox problem and the Ferrari mechanics managed to fix it in time for the Brazilian to continue running some laps until the lunch break.

The problem was not that detrimental as expected, although Massa did actually record the poorest time of the three drivers present on the Bahrain track on Wednesday morning. However, the Brazilian was only 0.041 seconds slower than first placed Nick Heidfeld (BMW Sauber) and 0.024 behind second placed Timo Glock (Toyota).

The times in the morning session – more than one second slower than the ones recorded in the first two testing days this week – were seriously affected by some strong winds. Headwinds on the main straight line caused a significant drop in lap times for all three teams present at the Bahrain test.

Massa will continue the testing in the afternoon session, hopefully at full speed. The Brazilian focused on different set up options during the course of this morning, through his 31 laps on the Sakhir track. As compared to Massa, Heidfeld has tested the BMW F1.09 for 64 laps, while Glock (debuting the Toyota TF109 this week) got the best mileage of 72.