Ferrucci wanted F1 'distraction' out of the way

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Santino Ferrucci says he wanted to get the "distraction" of his first F1 test out of the way to focus on his GP3 development.

The 18-year-old made his debut for Haas at Silverstone this week as he drove on both days of the final in-season test. Team principal Guenther Steiner said he was impressed by Ferrucci's pace and professionalism on the opening day but the American youngster says he didn't want to lose focus on his current race campaign.

"For me, I did the test to focus on GP3," Ferrucci said. "The test is at least out of the way in the schedule and my full focus is towards my GP3 season, so I don’t want to spend too much time here distracting myself too much – it’s really important to focus on one thing for me instead of multiple."

And Ferrucci says any Friday practice outings would need to be at the right time for him as he doesn't want it to impact on his GP3 preparations.

"Obviously we wanted to get the test out of the way so we could focus on the GP3 season and probably do some other stuff but we'll have to wait and see. It depends on if it takes time away from GP3.

"It's more time-related and focus-related than a lot of people think, so it's really difficult to switch between the GP3 car and the F1 car. So it's more about how you do it in the season and how everything's going."

When it was put to Ferrucci by F1i that Austin could fit well in his season schedule for a Friday outing, the American replied: "You never know!"

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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.