Admittedly, the F8-VII probably needed the most attention after debuting disappointingly in Australia, but chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne is confident that the programme being followed back at
Silverstone will begin to show results now that the circus is back in Europe.
“The start of the season was difficult for us as we only had very limited pre-season testing, then we didn't do the two tests in Malaysia and Bahrain,” he confirmed, “We also introduced updates in Malaysia that were hard to do in the field, so it was always going to be tough. Barcelona, however, will be a much more representative demonstration of what we can do compared to the teams in front.
“I think, certainly for Barcelona, the amount of testing we've done will be an advantage. We did a pre-season test there when other teams went to Bahrain, which we've now followed up with a further three-day test. Although the running was limited by the weather, we still got a couple of days of decent running and had more time to work with the new parts we introduced for Malaysia. On the last with Christijan especially, we made some progress with the set-up of the car that I think that will translate into a far more competitive weekend for us.
“Obviously, other teams have more mileage than us but, specifically for Barcelona, we're on a par with the others now. We're certainly not at the disadvantage we were in the last two races where the other teams had tested at the circuits and we hadn't.”
Adrian Sutil will be heading to a circuit he knows, unlike the opening three rounds, while Christijan Albers has been buoyed by a strong day of testing in Barcelona last week.
