Bahrain test begins Wednesday: Alonso to start

Company press release.

Sakhir, 18 February –Scuderia Ferrari is now in Bahrain and team personnel are preparing the garage at the Sakhir circuit, where the second pre-season test gets underway tomorrow. There are four days of track action, running up to Saturday.

With the track located on the edge of the desert, temperatures are ideal for testing, currently hovering around the 20 degree mark. Less pleasant is the wind which is blowing hard today, bringing quite a bit of sand onto the track. One cannot therefore expect to see any particularly fast times on the first day, as the surface will be rather dirty. Fernando Alonso will be first on track for Scuderia Ferrari, running on the first two days, before handing over to Kimi Raikkonen for Friday and Saturday.

The emphasis over the next four days will be mainly on checking all the systems and control parameters of the F14 T. In addition, the programme will include set-up work, helped by the fact that Sakhir is a more representative circuit for comparing the data obtained over the past few days in the simulator, as well on the tyre front. The engineers will also be relying on the expertise of Alonso and Raikkonen to move forward with the development of the car. Finally, great attention will be paid to the behaviour of the 059/3 power unit, which has been the focus of a lot of work in the last few weeks. In fact, the power unit has to be presented to the FIA to be signed off as homologated by 28 February.