Anyone else feel Ferrari might have messed up with their car after reading this?
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Ferrari has a hefty workload with its new car according to Felipe Massa, who has spent the last two days trying to get a better understanding of the F2012.
The car is a complete departure from last year's F150 Italia and the team has described the design concept as "aggressive". Massa debuted the car on Tuesday with 69 laps of the Jerez circuit and then upped the mileage on Wednesday with a further 95 laps.
However, he said starting with a completely new concept means there is more to understand than in previous years.
"Actually it's a lot of work," he after stepping out of the F2012 on Wednesday. "It's a brand new car and it's not like the cars that we've had in the last few years, even to start with. So it's a lot more work, it's a car that you need to try a lot more things with as well. Today I did so many laps just trying such different things in the car."
Asked if there were any unwelcome surprises, Massa said: "You always have that in a new car, something that you don't see the result you'd expect. And with some other parts you have different directions. A new car is always like that, I think it's just the beginning of a new job to have a consistent and competitive car."
At times Massa looked ragged in the new car and was not helped by the blustery conditions at Jerez on Wednesday. But when he was asked if he was struggling to keep the car on the track, he played down any issues.
"It's a lot of work," he repeated. "We tried a lot of different things and a lot of runs we go out with not everything in the car, just so we can collect that data. It's different to how it was in the past, the programme is much more different and also more complicated for us because we tried so many things looking for the performance from a specific piece on the car that you are trying."
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I thought the best car is one which the team understands straight out of the box, or is easy to setup. If you have a complicated jigsaw puzzle to solve every race weekend, won't that slow down your process of setup optimization?
Or maybe its just wishful thinking from my side.
