Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Arrivabene: ‘Target achieved’ for Ferrari

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Maurizio Arrivabene says Ferrari has achieved its pre-season targets and is looking forward to seeing its relative improvement in Australia.

Ferrari endured a tough 2014 season in the face of Mercedes dominance, with Fernando Alonso scoring just two podiums for the team as it failed to win a race for the first season in over 20 years. With encouraging signs seen throughout pre-season from the new SF15-T, when asked how close to meeting its targets Ferrari was during testing, Arrivabene replied: “It’s achieved. The target is absolutely achieved.”

One area Ferrari appears to have made clear progress is with its power unit, and Arrivabene admits the signs are positive but is wary of judging the improvement based on testing alone.

“I’m listening to the drivers. We got some feedback from Kimi [Raikkonen] and of course some from Seb [Vettel]. Seb was doing a comparison with his old team and Kimi with last year’s car and they said they can feel an improvement is there. Even so, it’s also honest to say the other teams were not sleeping, so we need to measure the value and the real improvement in Australia.

“[In Barcelona] everybody is testing. Everybody goes with different settings, different fuel, different programmes; you can have an idea but not a clear idea. In Australia you have to go and be serious.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.