Skip to content

Ferrari's Pat Fry has given upbeat assessment of situation at the end of testing

"It's certainly a lot different from this time last year," Technical Director says

Image: Pat Fry: Ferrari have had "reasonably good results" so far

Ferrari Technical Director Pat Fry has delivered an upbeat assessment of their pre-season testing programme but cannot say whether they will be in the hunt for victory at next week's Australian Grand Prix.

Fry said that more parts would appear on the car at each of the first three races, with a major upgrade planned for next month's Chinese Grand Prix. "There are some more bits coming through, so there'll be a few more things in Melbourne. I think it will be particularly challenging testing things, particularly on a track that's not used that often, so we'll have to see," he said. "But there are more bits coming through for Melbourne, more for Malaysia and then a bigger upgrade for China." With teams in general struggling to understand Pirelli's new range of tyres owing to the cold weather they experienced in testing, Fry also said the lack of representative running conditions could cause surprises Down Under. "I think the race pace is going to be down to how we use the tyres. I think there's still going to be a lot of people learning things in Melbourne to be honest," he said. "I think there'll be a few surprised people and a few shocked people. We'll see, but it's the same for everyone." Fry added: "There's so little that's known about the tyres. When your first lap is one and a half seconds faster than your second, I wouldn't like to weigh up race pace against qualifying pace. "I think it's going to be fairly mixed up to be honest. I wouldn't like to predict where we're going to be. It'll be interesting to run at a very hot track; I'm not sure what it's predicted to be (in Melbourne) - whether it'll be 33 degrees like it was a few days ago."

Around Sky