Ferrari ran almost no upgrades during the first two test days in Mugello, despite the need to make a major step forward in the coming races if they’re to challenge for the title.
Felipe Massa confirmed the car he drove on Wednesday was near identical to that of Bahrain over a week ago, after Ferrari chose to focus on understanding the difficult tyre situation.
“Today [was] still useful, both for me and for the team, despite the fact the car was in almost identical trim to the one I drove in Bahrain,” revealed the Brazilian.
“We worked mainly on the tyres, on studying their behaviour over short and long distances and also looked at a handful of aerodynamic components, as well as various different set-ups on the car.”
Massa also confirmed that the major upgrades, such as a revised exhaust layout, will come on the final test day when Fernando Alonso will take the wheel of the F2012.
“We got through almost the entire programme and tomorrow it will be down to Fernando to experiment with some of the new parts we have prepared for the start of the European season.”
The 31-year-old is confident Ferrari are making good progress in understanding the issues which have plagued their early season pace.
“It’s obvious we need to make a good step forward as soon as possible if we want to be competitive,” continued Felipe. “I am confident about the work we have done in these past few weeks, but we won’t really know if we have reached our targets until we get to Barcelona.
“We can be sure the other teams have also worked a lot, so if we want to make progress, we will have had to make a significant leap forward in performance terms. It is a very long championship, but we need to make up ground in the next three to five races if want to achieve our goals and this is a key moment to improve our situation.”
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