Ferrari takes confidence from race simulation

Ferrari technical director James Allison says Kimi Raikkonen’s race simulation has given the team confidence it will have a consistent car this year.

Raikkonen carried out his first race simulation on Saturday afternoon, completing the full 66 laps without any interruptions and with good consistency. While Allison won’t use the times set to focus on Ferrari’s competitive potential, he says the running has shown the SF15-T to be a predictable car which should help the drivers get performance out of it.

“We’ve got a lot of laps under our belt in this winter testing; but until you actually go out and do the laps for a race, one after the other, and not stopping except to change tyres, you really can’t claim that you’re ready to go to Melbourne and do it for real,” Allison said. “So we’re happy to get our first race distance of the winter done, happy to have achieved at the first attempt, and with the reliability that we showed.

“So I’m pleased with the testing we did over the last two days, which shows clearly that the car works as we expected.

“Winter testing in Europe always asks slightly different questions from the car than you get when you’re in Bahrain: but it doesn’t turn night into day. Most of what the car really is is revealed here as much as on the other Grand Prix circuits during the year. And I think what we see is a well-mannered car, so we expect these characteristics to be broadly carried over to the other races.”

Full times and day three of the final test as it happened

Click here for the gallery from day three of the final test