Four days at Paul Ricard

By Andrew Cutler
May 19 2007

Scuderia made the most of their four testing days at the Paul Ricard ciricut, trying out different tire compunds and areo settings as they simulated driving at each of the next three tracks on the 2007 F1 itinerary: Monaco, Montreal and Indianapolis. They also made good on a promise to give Champ Car ace Sebastien Bourdais another day in the seat of an F1 car.

The first two days were spent running on a "short" set-up of the track, simlutaing the conditions that they expect to find at Monaco. The weather was less than coperative on Tuesday, restricting Scott Speed to only 53 laps of running with a top time of 1:08.143.

Sebastien Bourdais would take over on Wednesday, taking advantage of better weather to put in 142 laps with a top time of 1:07.743 as the team experimented with tyre compounds and some new mechanical and areo components. 

Scott Speed would be behind the wheel again on Thursday as the test switched over to the "long" track set-up, meant to better simulate Montreal and Indy. Using a low-downforce areo package and "super-soft" tyres, Scott would blaze off a lap time of 1:29.039, the second fastest of the day. 

Vitantonio Liuzzi would get his turn on Friday. he posted a best time of 1:29.993 and ran 56 laps. there was no word on specifically what he was testing.

In the opinion of STR's chief engineer, Laurent Mekies, the four days at Paul Ricard has yielded valuable information that the team hopes to put to good use. "In terms of performance, we ran across the range of aero settings, from maximum downforce for Monaco on the first two days, to minimum for Canada on these last two and we hope to have a new aero package in time for the Canadian Grand Prix," Mekies said. "Overall therefore, this has been a productive four days, but we still have a lot of work to do to reach an acceptable level of reliability."