{"id":22516,"date":"2014-07-10T06:47:37","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T10:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=22516"},"modified":"2014-07-10T06:47:37","modified_gmt":"2014-07-10T10:47:37","slug":"ferrari-seat-not-the-plan-for-2015-bianchi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/ferrari-seat-not-the-plan-for-2015-bianchi\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferrari seat ‘not the plan for 2015’ – Bianchi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jules Bianchi staked a claim on a Ferrari race seat on Wednesday, setting the pace at the post-British grand prix Silverstone test.<\/p>\n

Drafted in by Ferrari to replace Kimi Raikkonen after the Finn’s high-speed crash last Sunday, Frenchman and Marussia driver Bianchi looked as impressive as Fernando Alonso had been in practice last weekend in the same F14-T car.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Bianchi’s 1 minute 35.2 laptime was more than a second faster than Raikkonen – who has notably struggled in 2014 – had managed in Silverstone practice.<\/p>\n

Although clearly part of Ferrari’s future plans, the 24-year-old played down the significance of his Silverstone speed, insisting differing wind conditions between the race weekend and the test played a significant role.<\/p>\n

“But it’s always good to do some good laptimes and to be consistent,” he admitted.\u00a0 “Obviously it is much better to do a good job and a good laptime.”<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Raikkonen is firmly under contract for 2015, and Bianchi acknowledged that a race seat with the Maranello team “is not the plan for next year”.<\/p>\n

Another major talking point at Silverstone on Wednesday was the prototype 18-inch low-profile tyre being tested by Pirelli and Lotus.<\/p>\n

In charge was Lotus tester Charles Pic, and he said the tyre seemed “more nervous” than its 13-inch counterpart.<\/p>\n

“These are just a prototype concept,” explained Pirelli’s Paul Hembery.<\/p>\n

“But if the teams decided that they wanted us to proceed in this direction, we have the capability to come up with a production-ready version in a comparatively short space of time,” he added.<\/p>\n

A photo of the tyre in action can be seen below<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jules Bianchi staked a claim on a Ferrari race seat on Wednesday, setting the pace at the post-British grand prix Silverstone test. Drafted in by Ferrari to replace Kimi Raikkonen after the Finn’s high-speed crash last Sunday, Frenchman and Marussia driver Bianchi looked as impressive as Fernando Alonso had been in practice last weekend in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,93,5340,1675,152],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22516"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22517,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22516\/revisions\/22517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}