Scuderia Ferrari Young Driver Test - Day Three

Scuderia Ferrari Young Driver Test - Day Three Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi, Thursday 17 November 2011 Bianchi, the workaholic of Abu Dhabi Jules Bianchi 11-17-2011 110455tst.jpgJules Bianchi 11-17-2011 110449tst.jpgAt the end of the three days of testing at the Yas Marina circuit, the workaholic prize among the young drivers, if one looks at distance covered, goes to Jules Bianchi. Three of them, Jules, his fellow countryman Jean-Eric Vergne in the Red Bull and English driver Sam Bird in the Mercedes, were almost always out on track, from nine on Tuesday morning to five this afternoon and Jules is the one who covered the 5.554 kilometre track the most often, 282 times to be precise, which is almost three times the distance from Maranello, where he lives, to Brignoles, the region of Provence his family comes from. And all of this in a cockpit where the temperature exceeded the 50 °C mark.

“I am pleased with these three days of testing: being able to work continuously with the team is very important for my growth as a driver,” said Jules speaking to http://www.ferrari.com at the end of the day. “Howcver, even more important is the realisation that I was able to help the team gather so much data which, I hope, will be useful for the development of the car.” While Jules may have won the French derby match in terms of time on track, it was Vergne who was quickest on all three days. Today, the Red Bull youngster got down to a 1.38.917, while the Ferrari man’s best was a 1.41.347, a time also bettered by Bird (1.40.897.) “I honestly don’t know what type of tyre the others used over the three days, given that Pirelli had also provided teams with the Supersoft and Medium compounds, as well as the Soft,” said Jules. “We only used the experimental Soft, because that was the priority for the team. It’s hard to say how they differ from the standard ones used during this actual championship: for our part, it was important to begin to understand their behaviour to try and get the best out of them next year.” Among the tasks entrusted to Jules today was exploring some set-up solutions that were rather different to the norm. “Yes, this morning, we did a few runs with what was an unusual set-up on the car for us,” explained the French driver. “One has to make the most of these few chances we have to test to explore new areas of development, because on the Friday of a race weekend, there is not much time for this work.” Now, Bianchi has a moment to draw breath: one trip to Brazil, to be on hand for the Scuderia for the final race and then it will be time to concentrate on the future. For that, he has one clear objective - Formula 1 and this test has confirmed that Jules is ready for it.