Phil Charles: “We have put plenty of miles on Max”

Published on 03 March 2016 by Johan Peeters

Phil Charles, chief race engineer of Scuderia Toro Rosso, says after Thursday in Barcelona “With Day 3 being Max's last day in the car before Melbourne, our program changed tack a little towards more specific race event preparation. To that end we completed more short running than we have been doing recently. In the morning we compared the softer compound types across short runs. This was very interesting for us as we have spent nearly all of our laps up to this point at T01 and T02 on Medium tyres. In retrospect, we will need to look carefully in the data to understand the different compounds. Our tyre group will be working hard with the chassis engineers to put the full picture together as we go forward from here. In the afternoon we concentrated on several race stint simulations. Again more useful information was gathered then.

“Overall we can certainly say that in the two winter tests we have put plenty of miles on Max (and the car!). This can only be a good thing and I hope that he goes away having learnt some more, and we will find ourselves in a good position to set the car up around him in Melbourne.”