Massa: "Ferrari is working in the right direction"

The penultimate day of testing before the Bahrain Grand Prix saw the rain once again having fun slowing down the programs of the eleven teams on track today at the Circuit de Catalunya, near Barcelona. Shortly after 10.20, an intermittent but persistent drizzle wet the track and made the work on the track insignificant for the rest of the morning. Then, in the early afternoon, a few more drops fell but this time they were not enough to make it necessary to use wet tyres.

As partly happened in Jerez, Felipe Massa was not very lucky, as he saw his work program revolutionized a bit. Despite a long break between 12.30 and 14.30, when the team brought forward some work on the car in order to make the most of the time available between the afternoon and tomorrow, the Brazilian driver still came in second in the standings of laps completed, having completed 115 of them. In particular, Felipe carried out a new race simulation, which he completed successfully. The best lap time was 1.22.344, obtained in the last stint of the simulation.

"We still managed to cover a lot of kilometres, which is always positive" – Felipe told ferrari.com – "We completed another race simulation without problems, which helped us to understand the behavior of the tires in the various fuel and track conditions. I am satisfied with this day: we are working in the right direction for this start of the championship."

After Alonso in recent days, today Massa was able to try for the first time the new aerodynamic solutions that equip the F10 from this test: "I had some positive sensations: you feel more grip, more aerodynamic load. It's encouraging, because it means that we have taken another step forward compared to Jerez."

Tomorrow is the last day of testing and Felipe hopes for a day without rain: "We hope that the weather conditions will help us: it would be important to finish the tests in the dry so that we can still accumulate important data on the car in various conditions, even with less petrol on board."