Rigon excited for ‘first day of school’ at Prologue
As the spiritual home of Ferrari, Davide Rigon has even more reason than most to look forward to this week’s FIA World Endurance Championship Prologue at Monza.
The 30-year-old Italian, who shares the No. 71 Ferrari 488 GTE with Sam Bird, will use the test as an opportunity to experiment with low-drag aero configurations in preparation for the WEC 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps and the 24 Hours of Le Mans later in the year.
After a busy winter behind the scenes logging laps all around Europe, Rigon is excited to see how Ferrari stacks up against the opposition, as all the teams run on track together for the first time.
“The Prologue is always a special happening. In a certain way it’s like the first day of school – you have the chance to meet all the guys, not only the ones of your team, but it’s not a proper lesson day so there’s not the same pressure,” he said.
“Talking more seriously, it is the first occasion we have to see where we are compared to the others and so it is like a little exam you do with your team to understand if you did things well in the off season.
“We have to check all the systems and we’ll take advantage of this super-fast track to test something in a Spa and Le Mans configuration. Collecting data is always important, and I believe we can learn something interesting in different areas. We will study how the car behaves in different configurations and we’ll be doing a similar work with the tires.”
Rigon is relishing the prospect of welcoming his countrymen to Prologue and shared his hopes of one day perhaps competing in a WEC race at Monza.
The last ACO-sanctioned sportscar race at the 5.793 km cathedral of speed, the 1000 km of Monza, was staged in 2008.
“As an Italian, I’m happy that this year the Prologue is going to be in Italy and I hope that a lot of fans will come to have a closer look to this championship,” he said.
“I hope to see a lot of fans and motorsport lovers on the grandstands, even if this is a test and not a proper race. We saw in recent years that the GT races ran at Monza always had a good attendance.
“I think it’s important to have an event like the Prologue to attract fans, and it would be even better if one days we were able to have a WEC race in Italy! Who knows?
“Monza has a great past for endurance racing with the famous 1000 km race that was held for many decades, so it would be great to come back racing there.”
