Schwartzman: I will try to help the team as much as possible

This weekend Robert Schwartzman will drive his first training session at Zandvoort in the car of Carlos Sainz. Before that, he answered several questions from the team’s press service…

Question: How did you feel when you first got behind the wheel of the SF-23 after working with it in the simulator for the first time?
Robert SchwartzmannA: I helped the team build the SF-23 and was excited to test the real car on the track.

Training behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car on one of the stages of the World Championship is a cause for pride, especially when it is the car of the Ferrari team, which has supported me throughout my career.

Before the summer holidays I spent half a day testing to get used to the cockpit again, because it’s been a while since I was last behind the wheel. Even though the tests have been done with the SF21, which is different from this year’s car and uses 13 inch tyres, it is still very useful for the first practice at Zandvoort.

It will be interesting to compare the SF-23 to last year’s F1-75, which I drove twice last year – at the US Grand Prix and Abu Dhabi.

Question: What program did the team have planned for the first Friday practice? What can you do to help the team?
Robert Schwartzmann: For my part, I will try to help the team as much as possible by implementing our plan aimed at getting the most out of the car, both in terms of tuning and in terms of collecting data that can be useful are in the second part of the season. The development program behind the scenes in Maranello needs as much data as possible to move forward even faster.

Question: You drove the Dutch circuit on the simulator, what are its characteristics?
Robert Schwartzmann: Zandvoort is one of the hardest circuits on the calendar, I’ve only driven it once in a real car before the configuration was changed, so it will be almost new to me.

After driving in the simulator, I can say that the track is very difficult, with sharp turns, different trajectory options and very demanding for the car, which works to the limit in many sections. Despite the difficulty, this is a very interesting circuit, and I hope I will have a lot of fun piloting this Friday.