Henry Catchpole recounts how Ferrari ensured its 430 Scuderia measured up against the clock...
‘Hello, chaps,’ he said, offering up one of his customary crushing handshakes ‘The people fromare here already. They’re just getting some breakfast in the canteen. I think I recognise one of them but for the life of me I can’t think of his name. He just looks familiar.’
At this point the Ferrari PR manager emerged from the scene of the bacon and eggs and announced that as well as the engineers, a fellow called Marc Gené was there to lend a hand with the testing. There was the sound of a penny dropping.‘“Michael Schumacher not available, then?” is what I wish I’d said at that point,’ recalls Barker.
As was the Prancing Horse way, Ferrari had already visited the circuit on a previous day and set a target time that the engineers wanted to see the Scuderia achieve. And, as ever, John rose to the challenge admirably. Actually, there was one different occasion when it looked like John was off the pace. We were testing one of the front-engined cars and Ferrari gently suggested that John had a couple of seconds to find.
There was plenty of time left at the end of our session with the 430 too, so it was suggested that Marc might go and set a lap time as well, just for comparison and data gathering. To make it fair, I sat in the passenger seat, just as I had for John’s laps. As you might imagine, it was very impressive to witness and he did shave a tenth or two. However, it wasn’t without incident.
‘You were both quite quiet when you came back to the pits,’ recalls John. ‘It was only when everyone else was out of earshot that you told me about the car’s small excursion across the grass, shedding some carbonfibre as it went. I was just glad it was him not me! People are less likely to look disapprovingly and tut when you’re an F1 test driver. Particularly a nice one.’
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