Ferrucci 'a little bit frightened' by wet test

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Haas debutant Santino Ferrucci admits he was "a little bit frightened" by the prospect of testing in the wet on his first day in an F1 car.

Ferrucci will drive on both days of this week's test at Silverstone, and impressed Haas team principal Guenther Steiner with his preparation and pace during a dry morning session. Rain in the afternoon meant Haas limited the 18-year-old's running, and Ferrucci admitted he was wary of the challenge despite being keen for as much track time as possible.

"I really wanted to go out there in the wet, but I was actually a little bit frightened," Ferrucci said. "Coming from the GP3 car, obviously the Sunday race was really good in almost wet conditions, but with an F1 car it is more than double the horsepower!

"So I think just going out there and taking it easy with the aero-rake was enough experience for me at the moment. I don’t really want to go out there and spin the car, put it in the gravel and give the mechanics more work to do for tomorrow. The idea is to learn what you can and go smoothly through the first day of testing."

Ferrucci believes there is plenty more to come from him on the second day at Silverstone, with the GP3 driver hopeful for more dry running.

"I was pushing it quite good in the low-speed, but I have margin for myself in the high-speed. Obviously it’s ridiculously quick and to go through Turn 1 flat or with a small lift will be tricky, so it just takes a little bit more than a morning session to get fully up to speed with the car. We’ll see tomorrow. Maybe we’ll open it up a bit with the power unit and have some fun."

Overall the American youngster is pleased to have impressed the team having had limited preparation for the session.

"It was pretty amazing! The car is a pleasure to drive and obviously the circuit is pretty great too. All the guys did a great job and I was really happy with it.

"To be honest with you, I did three hours in the Ferrari simulator last minute, so it was really nice of Ferrari and Guenther to organise that. But we just had the race weekend here with GP3, so I had a little bit of time to learn the circuit. But to learn the car is a bit different, but I took to it quite quickly.

"I think everything went really smoothly and I’ve been in a few debriefs with them before just to get an idea of what I need to talk about, what I need to discuss and what’s important. From learning in the past races and working with my engineers at DAMS, it’s helped me progress quite a lot to come here and do, I think, quite well."

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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.