Massa fastest on first day of Silverstone test

2014 F1 season

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Felipe Massa bounced back from his disappointing British Grand Prix weekend by leading the time on the first of two days of testing at Silverstone.

The Williams driver set a best time of 1’35.242, seven-tenths of a second off the quickest lap during the race weekend.

Daniel Ricciardo was second-fastest for Red Bull, just six-thousandths of a second off Massa’s best, followed by Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes.

Marussia covered 108 laps – more than two race distances – only for Jules Bianchi to stop on the track near the end of the test. Despite a brief fire on his car the team expect to be running again tomorrow with Max Chilton.

Bianchi will drive for Ferrari in place of Kimi Raikkonen, who is recuperating following his heavy crash on the first lap of Sunday’s grand prix.

Will Stevens finished his test for Caterham several seconds off the pace but had a productive day, covering 95 laps.

The test will conclude tomorrow, with Pirelli due to conduct running on their development 18-inch tyres with Lotus.

DriverCarBest timeLapsDifference
1Felipe MassaWilliams-Mercedes FW361’35.24242
2Daniel RicciardoRed Bull-Renault RB101’35.248720.006
3Nico RosbergMercedes W051’35.573900.331
4Adrian SutilSauber-Ferrari C331’35.674740.432
5Jules BianchiMarussia-Ferrari MR031’36.1481080.906
6Stoffel VandoorneMcLaren-Mercedes MP4-291’36.462711.220
7Sergio PerezForce India-Mercedes VJM071’36.583791.341
8Jean-Eric VergneToro Rosso-Renault STR91’36.688281.446
9Pastor MaldonadoLotus-Renault E221’37.131971.889
10Pedro de la RosaFerrari F14 T1’37.988492.746
11Will StevensCaterham-Renault CT051’40.627955.385

2014 F1 season


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Image © Williams/LAT

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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21 comments on “Massa fastest on first day of Silverstone test”

  1. Great to see Marussia continue their good form even.

    Yada, yada, yada testing… But you would have never seen this sort of result for the team a year or so ago.

    Felipe on top is probably of little consolidation to him, though :P

    1. Carlos Furtado das Neves
      8th July 2014, 18:39

      And PdLRosa (in a F14T) ahead of Will Stevens on a Caterham…
      Can somebody tell me why Ferrari continues to give a seat in F1 to him ???

      1. Can somebody tell me why Ferrari continues to give a seat in F1 to him ???

        It’s thanks to his valuable work that Ferrari’s simulator is up to date with the most advanced simulators (Mclaren and RBR).
        The aim from giving Pedro the ability to test behind the wheels of the F14T is to make a comparison between the real world and the simulator in order to close the gap between the 2.
        Test drivers in general doesn’t need to be fast, they just have to give the engineers valuable feedback in order to develop the car. For example, despite being a very respected test driver Luca Badoer wasn’t fast at all.

        1. Carlos Furtado das Neves
          8th July 2014, 19:21

          Thank you for the accurate explanation.
          But in my humble opinion, I believe Ferrari could also use the skills of younger drivers from their academy in those tests. For example: Marciello or Fuoco. The promissing future racers of the Scuderia… who knows?

          1. You don’t want young drivers to be a development driver really, you want somebody who is a safe pair of hands, who knows exactly what they are doing (DLR has been in F1 for many years), who won’t be erratic, and who has many years of experience, not just necessarily at F1 level.

          2. Also, should add to that: fuel levels, tyres, other things like that skew the results. Remember McLaren being fastest in one of the pre-season tests?

          3. Ferrari hired Pedro De Larosa in order to develop the simulator and to get it up to date with the best in the business. McLaren were the first team in F1 to launch a simulator project (early 00’s), at the time Adrian Newey was still Mclaren chief designer and they are believed to have the most advanced and high tech simulator. When Adrian moved to RBR he transferred the know how of the Mclaren project and RBR were able to build a simulator which is as good if not better than the one Mclaren have.
            Pedro De Larosa has been involved heavily within the Mclaren simulator project, Ferrari when they hired him, they were not looking for his testing ability in the first place (they have already Marc Gene, Davide Rigon, Fisichella apart from the FDA drivers, Bianchi, Marciello and recently Fuoco), they were looking for that “know how” which is considered invaluable

        2. Simple …. An experienced driver can understand and suggest stuff .. u know .. better and more than rookies

        3. Ferrari simulator clearly aint doing much isit.

    2. Felipe on top is probably of little consolidation to him, though :P

      Not just for him, but maybe the sole positive sports “results” for the country yesterday, what with being trounced badly by Germany in football @cgturbo

  2. Is this test live on TV or not ? Does anybody know ?

    1. Sadly no. I’ve checked American TV and European TV and there isn’t anything. If you have it, I would recommend Twitter. All the teams and some websites post updates there.

      1. Its unlikely you will see testing broadcast live anytime soon given how few people would watch it.

        Sky produced live coverage of the final pre-season test last year & in both the UK & Italy which broadcast it the viewing figures were lower than what the official practice sessions usually get, Hence why they didn’t repeat the live coverage this year.

        The other issue with testing is that there are long periods of time where not a lot happens & thats not really good for live TV coverage.
        And since in testing teams close off access to there pit garages you can’t just get some shots of the cars/drivers in the pit lane like you can when nobody on track in practice/qualifying during race weekends.

        1. @gt-racer, perhaps you could suggest to FOM the value of a few strategically placed web-cams. I know there would be nothing in it for Bernie, but I am sure fans and more importantly team sponsors would appreciate it.

    2. What a miserable situation. Every day F1 seems to whittle away its connection to the fans. Why oh why should we not be able to watch the testing? It’s not like any secrets will be revealed that other teams won’t be seeing.

      Oh sorry, I forgot, it’s all about the #money.

      1. As I said above the live testing coverage Sky produced last year barely got any viewers, Less than the official practice sessions & other broadcasters have not showed any interest in covering or even showing any testing coverage.

        Producing a broadcast costs money, A significant amount of money to pay for equipment, staff, satellite time etc…. Spending the cash on covering testing live would not be worth it given how small the viewer base would be.

        There’s nothing stopping Sky for doing live testing coverage again ot any other broadcaster stepping in to produce it. The reason they don’t is the same reason FOM don’t, As I said the cost of doing it isn’t worth it given how few people would be watching it.

        Plus as I said there is large periods of time during testing when nobody is on track or where all you get is the odd slow out/in lap, How do you cover the periods of time when there is no track action?

        The way these test sessions work simply isn’t geared towards live TV, Its not like an official practice session where you all the cars going out & setting lap times.

  3. Sandbags at dawn. I wonder what Mercedes were testing – it seemed to be reliable, at least.

    1. :-) Interesting though, 6 one thousandths of a second between the Williams and the RBR both just off Hamiltons Q2 time of 1.35.000 (easy to remember).

      1. Wish we could see the speed trap times to know if Williams were using more wing or RBR using less etc. but since both times were around Pole times there may be no difference.

  4. At least something went right for Brazil today.

    We’re pretty close to seeing Williams winning a race. This can only happen if Mercedes lose both cars in a race and this happens on a power circuit. And some other stuff goes well. But even if it doesn’t happen, what a great recovery from recent back-of-the-midfield form.

    1. @scalextric Best chance at Monza i guess, or maybe Spa. They have the best top speed (in standard spec, might be different at Monza) but not sure their traction is good enough. But like you said, probably need Mercedes to either have reliability problems or to screw up qualifying to give them a chance.

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