Felipe Massa has said that his Ferrari F150° Italia handled well on the damp track at Silverstone during Friday practice today, and is hoping that his performance in FP2 bodes well for the weekend ahead.
The Brazilian jumped to the top of the timesheets in this afternoon’s practice session with a fast lap in the closing stages, and has been conserving his wet weather tyres today in anticipation of more rain tomorrow and Sunday:
“The weather meant it was a difficult day, with rain affecting both the first and second sessions,” said Massa. “However, it seems to me that the car handles pretty well in the wet, which is positive in terms of the rest of the weekend, given there's a chance of more rain. That is also the reason why I only used one set of intermediate tyres: I had a bit of graining on the fronts, especially at the start of the second session, but towards the end, the situation improved and the performance of the tyre got better all the time.
“It is difficult to say where we are compared to the others, as the track conditions were changing continuously and it's not even easy to give an in-depth evaluation of the new components we brought here.”
Fernando Alonso finished down in P15 on a day were the timesheets meant little because of the ever-changing conditions. Ferrari were trying to test new parts today, but Alonso cannot say how whether they are any closer to Red Bull here at Silverstone:
“From what a driver can learn at the wheel, it's difficult to say if the new aerodynamic parts have helped us make progress, but at least they seem to work well,” he said. “In the wet, the car was not bad, as we had seen in fact in Canada: it's positive, because it could be like this again, especially tomorrow.”
