The FIA European F.3 debut of Michela Cerruti with the brand-new Romeo Ferraris team was slowed down by gearbox issues today as she was prevented to take full advantage of her Mercedes-powered Dallara and aim for pure performance. The issue came out at the start of Day 1 of the series’ collective test at Montmelò, 30 kilometers north of Barcelona, forcing Cerruti to perform several short stints with long stops in between while the team’s staff worked on her transmission. In the AM segment, Michela logged just 30 laps with a personal best mark of 1’44″138. That number went down to 22 in the afternoon session, with a best lap of 1’44″830.
“We knew it would have been a tough day since it was the very first run for the team’s cars. Unfortunately, the gears played up a bit today and I was prevented from logging laps smoothly as I couldn’t turn more than 7 laps at once. As a consequence, I couldn’t get the confidence I needed with the car. Tomorrow is another day though and I’m convinced that our work program will be off to a great start.”
