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Vergne 'much more confident' after Barcelona

ESPNF1 Staff
February 24, 2012 « 'We've made big steps as a team' - Rosberg | No dominant team - Whitmarsh »
Toro Rosso focused on pit stops during the late afternoon © Sutton Images
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Jean-Eric Vergne says that he is "much more confident" in the new Toro Rosso than he was after the first test in Jerez.

Vergne had previously only driven a Formula One car in two practice sessions for Toro Rosso and the Young Driver Test for Red Bull prior to the first test as he prepares for his first season in the sport. After completing 170 laps across two days in Barcelona, Vergne admitted that he felt more comfortable in the car after practising more procedures such as pit stops on the final day.

"I am much more confident in the car now than I was by the end of the Jerez test," Vergne said. "We worked on many different aspects of the job and for example, today I had a much better understanding of the pit stops than I did after trying them yesterday for the first time. We did some good work today, acquiring plenty of data and I expect this will help us to improve still further next week."

Chief engineer Laurent Mekies said that it had been a productive test despite Toro Rosso failing to complete more than 92 laps in a single day.

"From a technical point of view, we completed our programme, working through a large number of test items, which are the type of thing you can only achieve in winter testing when you have a lot of tyres," he said. "Some of the work of making these changes to the car was time consuming, which explains why we have not completed such a large number of laps, but it was important to get the answers on the items we wanted to evaluate here."

"We can be reasonably satisfied with the results achieved. The drivers are getting into the rhythm. Next week here there will be plenty of race simulations and our drivers will get a lot of time on track to experience race conditions. Overall this week, we achieved what we came here to do."

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