Ferrari: Lots of km for Bianchi in Abu Dhabi

When a driver goes too long without driving he accumulates a sense of frustration: having a steering wheel in his hands and being able to push on the accelerator are the things that make him feel better. If Jules Bianchi had developed this illness in Abu Dhabi he is following the right treatment: in two days the Frenchman has reached almost a thousand kilometres, having today added another 91 laps of the Yas Marina circuit to the 85 completed yesterday, practically remaining in the car seamlessly.

“Reliability is fundamental in testing because it allows you to do everything that is established by the engineers” – said Jules at the end of this long day – “Today we divided the work into two parts: in the morning we dedicated ourselves to the development of new solutions for next year's engine maps while in the afternoon we deepened our knowledge of the experimental tires that Pirelli made available to the teams in this test. From what we could see, there isn't much difference compared to the 2011 tires but obviously it's still too early to draw any kind of conclusion.”

Jules' progress was significant in terms of lap time, improving compared to yesterday by around seven tenths (from 1.40.960 to 1.40.279), but not enough to put him at the top of the time list because even today his compatriot Jean -Eric Vergne (Red Bull) was faster, albeit by just 91 hundredths. “I'm a driver and I would always like to be the fastest” – Jules said sincerely – “But I know well that in tests the stopwatch counts relatively. I was pleased to have also managed to progress in terms of performance because it means that I'm working well but the most important thing is to bring home all the data we need: there are few opportunities to test on the track and we need to make the most of them. Tomorrow we will continue to work on the tires and then we will have to see what the team plans in the evening meetings."

Of one thing Jules can be sure: the engineers will always find some reason to make the single-seater go kilometers because they too are like drivers and appetite comes with eating.