Kimi Raikkonen ended the final day of testing on top for Scuderia Ferrari, but felt that the times set in Jerez mean very little compared to the distance the team managed to cover in Spain over the four days.
The Finn completed 106 untroubled laps of the Jerez circuit and set a week’s best time of 1m20.841s, but was happier that his SF15-T car was an improvement from the F14-T that he struggled with during the 2014 Formula 1 season.
“Over the winter, we have made a good step forward and this car is definitely an improvement over the 2014 one,” said Raikkonen. “It’s the whole package that has progressed, but there is still a lot of work to do.”
Raikkonen insisted that the times were irrelevant, and that Ferrari were focused purely on their own work, and said they can develop the car from a good base.
“We are not comparing ourselves to the others; we just got on with our own job, without looking at what they were doing,” said Raikkonen. “Times are of relatively little importance; what matters is that we have put together a good number of laps without having any real problems.
“Today’s conditions were not that easy, with too strong a wind blowing on track, but then it’s the same for everyone. As I said, we now have a good basis from which to start the development work.”
Technical Director James Allison admitted that overall the team can be happy with how their test in Jerez went, even if he would have liked more laps in the books and faster lap times.
“When you bring a new car to the track, you’re always excited and worried and that is mixed with a profound hope that all the hard work of so many people will be rewarded with performance,” said Allison. “We leave this test without having all our expectations met, simply because we would have liked to have done even more mileage and because you always want to be faster.
“However, having said that, given how it went, overall we can be pleased, because we have had a solid start. Now, we are keen to push on with the development work in Barcelona, so as to be ready for the first race in Melbourne.”
