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Mortara not getting carried away after F1 test

Edoardo Mortara is keeping his Formula One ambitions in check despite making his debut at the Young Driver Test with Lotus on Wednesday.

Mortara, who finished fifth in this year's DTM championship, was third fastest on the second day of testing at Yas Marina as he took to the wheel of the race-winning E20. Mortara is an F3 Euroseries champion, a GP2 race winner and a two-time Macau Grand Prix winner, but said he is unsure what his future will hold.

"This opportunity in itself has been incredible for me but for the future, I really don't know what will happen," he said. "It's not really up to me to say what will happen; I'm already so grateful to Lotus F1 Team to have given me this test, and finally I can say I've driven a Formula One car."

Mortara was 0.739s off the Antonio Felix da Costa's fastest time of the day in the Red Bull, but said he was not really focusing on out-and-out pace.

"My aim was to take it slowly and surely, but always to improve," he added. "On every outing I think I did better. To be honest it's always difficult to compare your lap times with the others as you don't know what programme everyone is running. I was not really focusing on ultimate pace, more on doing what the team asked me to do. Obviously it's quite hard to talk about lap times for me as I don't really have any comparisons to make! My aim was just to do the best I could."

He said he quickly adapted to the Lotus, but admitted the difference in speed to his DTM car was dramatic.

"The buttons and steering wheel are something that I picked up quite quickly; what I found more challenging was actually the speed. It's very different from what I'm used to; the acceleration, braking, fast corners - the speeds are so much higher than in DTM. Physically I was very surprised. Everyone has told me that Formula One is very tough on the neck and shoulders, but I have trained very hard for this day so I didn't find it too much of a problem."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.