Jean-Eric Vergne admitted he was feeling more confident behind the wheel of the new
Toro Rosso STR7 following the conclusion of the second pre-season test of the year in Spain.
Toro Rosso enjoyed a solid week of running with both Vergne and team-mate Daniel Ricciardo setting encouraging lap-times, while the test also gave Vergne - who will be making his F1 debut this season – the chance to carry out work that will aid him during the year ahead.
With that in mind, the French driver admitted he felt more at home and was now aiming for more progress in the final test of the year – which starts on Thursday back at Catalunya.
“I am much more confident in the car now than I was by the end of the
Jerez test,” he said. “We worked on many different aspects of the job and for example, today I had a much better understanding of the pit stops than I did after trying them yesterday for the first time.
“We did some good work today, acquiring plenty of data and I expect this will help us to improve still further next week.”
Chief engineer Laurent Mekies said the team could be satisfied with the result of the four-day test, with
Toro Rosso now set to focus on race simulation during the final test.
“From a technical point of view, we completed our programme, working through a large number of test items, which are the type of thing you can only achieve in winter testing when you have a lot of tyres,” he said. “Some of the work of making these changes to the car was time consuming, which explains why we have not completed such a large number of laps, but it was important to get the answers on the items we wanted to evaluate here.
“We can be reasonably satisfied with the results achieved. The drivers are getting into the rhythm. Next week here there will be plenty of race simulations and our drivers will get a lot of time on track to experience race conditions. Overall this week, we achieved what we came here to do.”
