Pat Fry: Ferrari “in reasonable shape”

Ferrari technical director Pat Fry admits that the Italian team still has a lot of work to do, but the Brit is bullish about the overall prospects of the F2012.

Felipe Massa drove at Barcelona yesterday and Fernando Alonso today, both men logging a lot of miles as the car performed reliably and allowed the team to complete some race simulation work.

“I think we can say we are in reasonable shape,” said Fry. “Sure, you always try and be half a second quicker than everyone, knowing you are lapping constantly with 60 kilos of fuel on board. Clearly, we have a lot of work ahead of us, but all we can do is keep pushing on this front.

“We ran a mix of used softs and mediums for the simulation and now we must analyse the data in detail to understand where we are compared to the others. Initial impressions suggest the difference between one stint and another can be put down to the normal difference between tyres that have done different mileages. Some show significant degradation, others less.

“There will be other new components coming on the car for the final two days and then we will try and put together the best from every configuration for the first race.”

Ferrari has been running with a different exhaust spec, and Fry admitted that the original version needed some work.

“We started off with an exhaust system configuration that was particularly aggressive, but after last week’s test, it was clear this solution still required a lot of development before it could be used in a race. We opted for a more conventional configuration.

“Obviously, having developed the car to suit this innovative exhaust concept, now we must re-optimise everything in just the few days left before Australia. There aren’t major differences between the two systems in terms of performance, but we really need to analyse everything in detail.”