• Second Barcelona Test, Day Four

Ferrari updates having desired effect

The Ferrari featured a new exhaust layout at the final test © Sutton Images

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Ferrari technical director Pat Fry says the new F138 has suffered from none of the wind tunnel correlation issues that hampered last year's car.

On the final day of pre-season testing Fernando Alonso set the second fastest time and the new car, featuring a new exhaust and front wing this week, looked in much better shape that the troubled F2012 a year ago. This season the team is using one of Toyota's wind tunnels in Cologne while its own facility is updated and Fry said the parts coming to the car were having the desired effect.

"It's certainly a lot different from this time last year," he said. "We were pushing late towards the end of last year's championship and we started our aero programme quite late. We delayed a lot of the updates until half way through this test but the whole factory has been working very well. We've had some reasonably good results here and what's working in CFD and in the wind tunnel is starting to deliver on the track so I think it's a good sign for Melbourne and our development path throughout the year.

"Last year we made a few fundamental mistakes, which in reality we've learned from. I think this test, for us, has been good. You can never have 100% correlation [with CFD and the wind tunnel] but it's pretty good. That should help us with developments we bring to the races so that they should be as good as they have been today."

Fry did not want to predict where Ferrari would stack up against its rivals in Australia, but said a steady stream of updates would be coming to the car over the next few races.

"We have been quite late in getting stuff here and there are some more bits coming through in Melbourne," he said. "I think it will be a little bit challenging testing things with the way the tyres are, particularly on a track that is not used that often. We'll have to see but we've got more bits coming through for Melbourne, more for Malaysia and a bigger upgrade for China. So we have a reasonable development plan going."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.