Subscribe

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe

Jules Bianchi thinks Marussia made winter strides

Marussia's new signing Jules Bianchi believes the team has improved more than most of its Formula 1 rivals over the winter

Bianchi's MR02 found over a second on the final day of the test, ending up ahead of the Toro Rosso of Daniel Ricciardo and matching the pace of Charles Pic's Caterham.

Although the F1 rookie was cautious about reading too much into the times, he believes Marussia - which will have KERS for the first time in 2013 - has made good progress.

"If you look at the lap times, yes, we've improved a lot," said Bianchi when asked by AUTOSPORT if he thought Marussia was one of the winter's top improvers.

"It's a small surprise that we did quite a good improvement and I'm happy with that.

"Even from my side, just from Saturday to Sunday, it is a big improvement. But we don't know what people were doing so it is difficult to say what the [relative] improvement is."

Bianchi still expects the challenge of joining the midfield battle to be tough.

"We have to be realistic - it'll be difficult to beat the cars in the midfield, but we'll try our best," he added. "You never know..."

AUTOSPORT special testing coverage:

Gallery Testing blog Technical blog Live commentary Trackside view

Be part of the Autosport community

Join the conversation
Previous article Ferrari drivers say Red Bull test form not a worry
Next article What we learned from the final F1 test

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe