| Pietro Fittipaldi was first up to get behind the wheel of the VF-22 on the opening day of Formula 1 pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit. The team was unable to run in the morning session due to freight delays earlier in the week, but the Brazilian driver was first out on track in the afternoon, getting to work on the Pirelli C2 tire. After 17 laps, Fittipaldi swapped compounds to test out the C2 prototype tires to benchmark against the standard specification tire. His first run on the test set featured a 12-lap stint, before returning to the C2 tire to add another 12 laps to his tally. The final run of the day featured the C2 proto tire once more but was unfortunately cut short by a red flag after Sergio Perez beached his car in the gravel, signaling an early end to the first day of pre-season testing. Fittipaldi ran a total of 47 laps, setting his fastest time of 1:37.422 on the Pirelli C2 proto tire. Mick Schumacher will commence running on Friday before Kevin Magnussen gets his very first taste of the VF-22 in the afternoon session. Pietro Fittipaldi – Driver, No.51: “Today was great, finally getting to drive the VF-22. It’s a new car, a new generation, so it’s very valuable and important to get those laps in and it’s a very different car to drive, so it was interesting. We were focused on doing a lot of laps – that was the main goal since we didn’t get as much in Barcelona – so we were running harder compounds and a lot of longer lap simulations. We accomplished our goal and I’m very happy with today. It was very important to gain experience with this new car.” Guenther Steiner – Team Principal: “We finally got going today after all the delays with the freight. The team did a fantastic job to get the car ready to go out after having 36 hours less than all other teams. We got out just for the afternoon session, but we need to make it up in the next days. All in all, it was quite a good day of running – we’re getting a better understanding of how the car works and we just need to continue like this. We did 47 laps which, if we can do continually over the next days, I’m almost happy.” |
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Haas F1 Team PR
