Alex Zanardi admits that the ROAL Motorsport-run BMW Team Italy-Spain outfit has work to do as it heads to Valencia for next weeks World Touring Car Championship group test at the Spanish circuit.
The team tested at Estoril last month alongside Chevrolet and the other BMW teams, although Zanardi admitted that he hadn't performed as well as he expected on what was his final outing in the 2007-spec BMW 320si.
For the Spanish test, Zanardi will be at the wheel of his 2008 race car for the first time as he seeks to put himself closer to the pace looking to the opening rounds of the year in Brazil.
"We will be at Valencia trying to tune our 'instrument' ahead of the first race at Curitiba," he said. "The mentioned 'instrument' will be the 2008 car for the first time.
"Things will not be easy first because the tarmac of the Spanish track is very different from that of the Brazilian one and also because the outcome of Portuguese tests showed that we have some ground to regain from our German and English cousins.
"We need to be realistic and the trend of these first tests just reflects last season, where we got by but we were not really brilliant. However, this does not mean that we are showing the white flag. On the contrary, I can't wait to try the set-up solutions that my new technician Pietro Speronello and I devised on the basis of data harvested in Portugal."
