Bianchi 'feeling comfortable' in F1 car

The Frenchman, who finished third in GP2 this season despite not winning a race, also completed two days of running in last year's F1 rookie test at Jerez, but now feels better equipped to contribute to Ferrari's cause in 2011.

"I'm really happy because I will do a good job next year," he said when asked by AUTOSPORT if he felt that he was ready for his newly-enhanced testing role. "I'm a lot more comfortable now in F1.

"I needed to improve a lot because F1 is different compared to GP2. Even though GP2 is the step before F1 you have a lot of difference so it's difficult to adapt."

Bianchi set the fifth-fastest time of the second day of testing after spending his first day concentrating on doing development work for the team. Even today, the focus was not on setting headline lap times, although his programme allowed him to lap almost four seconds faster than he had on Tuesday.

"It was fun for me because I could push as I wanted," he said. "But we didn't search for performance, we just wanted to have some data for the team to improve for next year.

"It was really good. But when we tried to push with the soft tyres, unfortunately there were red flags."

Bianchi is set to return to GP2 for a second season next year alongside his role as Ferrari tester.