Korean GP: Practice notes - Ferrari

12/10/2012

For Scuderia Ferrari, the Friday of the Korean Grand Prix at the Yeongam circuit, was essentially divided into two parts. In the morning, Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa worked mainly on set-up and on the aerodynamic configuration of the F2012, while the afternoon was given over to evaluating tyre behaviour over short and long runs. There were no technical problems on either car, which is always a good way to start a race weekend. Between them the two drivers completed 102 laps, 53 for Felipe and four more for his team-mate.

Fernando Alonso: It's hard to say where we are compared to the others, because today, we focused mainly on ourselves, working this morning on a comparison of various ideas relating to car configuration and, in the afternoon on the tyres. We must wait til tomorrow to have a more precise picture of the situation. The track improved a great deal from one session to the next: it's a phenomenon that's particularly accentuated here, because there's hardly any racing on this track and this morning, it was particularly dirty. Let's hope the situation improves for tomorrow because it's always more fun driving when the track offers at least some grip. The most demanding part of this circuit is definitely the third sector, the shortest in terms of time, made up almost entirely of corners. The set-up choices are dictated mainly by car behaviour in this third sector, while the other two are definitely easier to deal with.

Felipe Massa: I'd say this weekend has got off on the right foot, but the important thing is to continue down this path tomorrow on Sunday, when it really counts. Our car seems pretty good on this track, which is cause to be hopeful, even if we will only discover the truth tomorrow in qualifying. From what we could see this afternoon, in the second session, the difference between the Soft and the Supersoft is definitely a big one: we seemed comfortable on the two of them, on both low and high fuel loads. Now we are trying to prepare as well as possible for qualifying, which looks like being very closely contested: there is some very strong opposition and we will have to do everything perfectly if want to be able to match them.

Pat Fry: Overall, it was a positive day and as usual on a Friday, we had a lot of work to get through, managing to complete almost everything we had wanted to achieve. This morning, the aim was to evaluate a few updates on the car and try various aerodynamic configurations, especially relating to the rear wing, to choose the best one for a track of this type. In the afternoon, we concentrated on a comparison of the Soft and Supersoft tyres, which Pirelli has supplied to the teams for this Grand Prix, over both short and long runs. From what we could see this afternoon, the difference in performance between them does not seem so high, but it's true that, in theory, as the track evolves over the next couple of days, the difference should be accentuated. I would say we have a reasonably clear idea when it comes to the technical choices to be made for this Grand Prix: now we must try and optimize the package we have in order to get the best possible result.

Check out our Friday gallery, here.