Ferrari to test 2014 parts on this year's car
With 6 races on the calendar, Ferrari's chances of securing either of the championships this year are waning. The team is therefore settings its sights on 2014 by using this year's Friday sessions to test some components.
Ferrari's Director of Engineering, Pat Fry, rightfully points out that some developments are still in the pipeline, even though the team's focus has shifted to next year's challenge: “We’ve still got some developments coming through for the next few races and we will be running and testing them to continue to try and improve the car. For 2014, because of the much larger changes to the cars on the engine side and also the aero aspect, it’s naturally much harder to test components now, but there will be some small development bits we can run during this year’s remaining free practice, looking more on the reliability front than anything else, which means we have busy Fridays planned for the next six races.”
Chief Designer Nikolas Tombazis confirmed this as he explains the balance of workload between 2013 and 2014.
“Our efforts will be partly aimed at continuing to understand better the tyres and tyre management, which might see some improvement compared to our competitors,” he says. “And we are bringing small aero updates. One should not expect these to dramatically affect the final result but we feel they will bring some improvement.”
