Felipe Massa becomes the fastest driver at the first day of Jerez test session
Ferrari’s Felipe Massa scored the fastest lap time at the first day of the second pre-season test session that took place in Jerez on the 10th of February, 2011. This was the first session after Robert Kubica’s accident; Robert was the fastest
man at the Valencia test session.
Felipe had a tough 2010 Formula 1 season as he was unable to utilize his car and squeeze out the best performance out of it while his team-mate Fernando Alonso was clearly one of the best drivers in 2010 as he finished in 2nd place, just 4 points
behind the 2010 Formula 1 world champion Sebastian Vettel.
Felipe finished in 6th place in the drivers’ standings and was way behind the top 5 drivers in terms of points that were contending for the title. Other than that, he was unable to score a single win either, with the exception of him braking from
1st place to let his team-mate win at the German grand prix in order to keep the Spaniard’s championship-run alive.
Nevertheless, Ferrari is expecting that Felipe would give a much better performance in 2010 and he would perform up to the team’s expectations. This test session’s result shows that at least he is trying to push but one cannot rely on these results completely
as most of the teams during these test sessions try to experiment with their cars more, rather then push their drivers to perform at their best.
The teams try to squeeze out every thousandth of a second during these sessions and as a result, the top running drivers mostly try to provide their teams with more data rather than results.
However, Sergio Perez from Sauber scored the second fastest time followed by Red Bull Racing Team’s Mark Webber. Other than that, Daniel Ricciardo finished in 5th place and it seems that the teams are now trying to get a hold of the Pirelli tyres
more and adjust their cars according to the new tyre compounds.
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