Felipe Massa ended the Barcelona tests on top of the timesheets. Along with teammate Fernando Alonso, Ferrari tried all the Pirelli compounds on all sorts of fuel levels. Even though fastest, Massa quietly turned attention towards Red Bull's undeniable speed as well as Nico Rosberg, in addition to not ruling out McLaren.

uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/22022011/23/massa...

As the pre-season still rolls on the insight into the Pirelli tyre wear characteristic continues to amaze. Below is a link to the graph comparison between the previous Bridgestone's wear rate versus the new Pirelli compounds, circulating the web. The conclusion, so far, has been that the Bridgestones were so good that as the car got lighter they also were faster, where as the Pirelli's are just falling off straight away.

www.jamesallenonf1.com/2011/02/f1-test-a...

At F1QA we tend toward not as rather between good or bad yet that they are both different tyres. Bridgestone is conservative and consistent as far as performance, lap to lap whereas, it seems, the Pirelli is an agressive and variable compound requiring different set-up and philosophy toward race pace and strategy.

On the graphs, it looks like Ferrari is getting to grips, pun intended, with the differences the fastest, again, and hence, may we be so bold, underlines also why Massa headed the timesheets in Barcelona.

Jarno Trulli lends supports to this outlook, recently quoted in Autosport stating that the "tyres lack balance", explaining further that they gave little consistency from lap to lap... the full Trulli article is enclosed below.

www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/896...

In any case, now with the postponed Bahrain, the teams will have much needed time to sort out this engineering wrinkle in time for the season opener in Australia. Plus, it also spared the viewing audience what might have been a race of spectacle with the tyres going off so quickly and cars not set up sliding all over the place.

Come to think of it though that might not have been that bad ;-)

Nonetheless. Congrats to Felipe!

Looking forward to next test, when they get all that decided.

Cheerio,

The F1QA Editiorial Team

more F1QA at: on.fb.me/ePRoci

'Team orders' in Germany aside, Felipe came away with another great nick-name after it was all said and done.  All good, and Felipe now has the upper-hand. Look for a stunner in Hungary. Go Felipe baby, go!

read more 'team orders' nonsense in this Q&A:

www.grandprix.com/ns/ns22476.html