Although their rivals won’t be back on track until the end of next month, the Scuderia Ferrari team went back to work last week with new 2006 recruit, Felipe Massa, on duty at the Vallelunga track in Italy. After two years racing for the Sauber Petronas team, the Brazilian driver returned to the team where he was employed as a test driver in 2003, and he thoroughly enjoyed himself.

Last week’s test was centred on development of the new V8 Ferrari engine that was housed in the championship winning F2004 chassis. While stating the obvious in regard to the fact that the V8 is a lot different to the V10 power he has been driving for years now, Felipe admitted that it was not as bad as he thought it might have been….

"It was fun, I expected worse. I like it," the Brazilian told the Gazzetta dello Sport. "Obviously there's still a lot of work to do, but it seems very driveable. It's definitely better than I expected. Compared to the V10 it's pretty different: with two cylinders less there's a lot less power, but it's fast anyway. After having got used to a lot of horsepower, I feared a big worsening. I'm happy about how testing has gone: two sunny days and lots of kilometres done. And every lap I learned something on the car."