Sergio Perez appears to have impressed Ferrari on his first test in a Maranello car at Fiorano today, and has probably done his chances of landing a race seat in 2013 – or beyond – no harm at all.
Perez and Ferrari third driver Jules Bianchi both drove the 2009 F60 model today – which is allowed within the confines of the testing agreement – as part of their ongoing relationship with the Ferrari Driver Academy.
Perez completed 46 laps with a best time of 60.650s, while Bianchi did 70 laps, with a best of 60.213s, although not much can be learned from the times as they were running different prgrammes.
“This was a really special day for me,” said Perez. “I want to thank Ferrari for giving me this chance to improve and learn, given the limited number of testing opportunities during the year. Driving a Ferrari was a dream for me and it’s also important for my career, learning with a team like this and experiencing a different approach to the work.”
Regarding talk of a future at Maranello, Perez said: “I think there is room for me to do well where I am and that’s my current target. It’s impossible to say how things will go and my dream is to become World Champion and it would be nice if it could happen with a team like this one. I have got a lot out of this time with the Ferrari Driver Academy. The work on the simulator, the meetings with the engineers are all things that will help me over the rest of the season and in general in the future.”
“We did a lot of laps and once again it was a very useful experience for me,” said Bianchi. “These laps all count a lot towards the future I’d like to have in Formula 1. Now, I’m looking forward to the Young Driver Test in Abu Dhabi and it will be very interesting to go from the 2009 car to the 2011 one, as it will be a good opportunity for me to try elements like DRS and KERS for the very first time.”
“Today, we followed two different programmes with Perez and Bianchi,” said Academy head and formerF1 engineer Luca Baldisserri. “Sergio impressed, despite this being his first time at the wheel of a Ferrari. He proved to be aggressive and quick right from the start and was able to adapt to the car in a very short space of time.
“He is very mature for his age, displaying an understanding that goes beyond the time he has spent driving single-seaters. With Bianchi, who has been with us since last year, we used a car fitted with special sensors to study the correlation between the car on track and the simulator: many of his laps were what I’d call ‘interlocutory’ because the main aim of them was to acquire data.”
Adam Cooper F1 