Last week, while Auto GP champion Kevin Ceccon was taking his driving duties with Scuderia Toro Rosso in the Abu Dhabi rookie test, a very interested observer was following him from his office in Italy.Enzo Coloni, the Auto GP boss, was in constant contact with the Italian driver, giving him advices and directions based on his past F1 experience. Coloni, a very successful driver himself in the 70s in Italy, fielded his own F1 team in the World Championship from 1987 to 1991, years in which he used to personally care about the shakedown of his F1 cars. Besides this, some years earlier he had lived an experience that was very similar to what Kevin had in Abu Dhabi: in 1982, after winning the Italian F3 title, he was given the chance to test with both Toleman and Arrows, leaving a very good impression. Here is how Mr. Coloni judged Ceccon’s performance: “I would say that Kevin delivered a top-notch job. The team asked him to complete a very complex development programme straight out of the box, and after hearing the comments from the technical staff it’s clear that he was up to the task.Besides this, it’s important to underline that Ceccon’s performance was absolutely faultless, and that’s a huge undertaking for a rookie. He had many new things to assimilate, but despite this he did no mistakes and did a flawless job in every aspect, from tyre testing to pit-stop practice”. This means that Auto GP gave him a good preparation for this huge leap?“If you consider that just one year ago Ceccon was coming out from his first full F3 season, there’s no doubt that racing in Auto GP made him grow a lot and quickly. There are many reasons for that: technically the car has the right features, the sporting formula has been conceived to prepare drivers for GP2 and F1 and the grid competitiveness is very high. Despite this, there isn’t too much pressure on the driver, and this makes it the right environment for a young talent to grow.Then Kevin did the rest: throughout 2011 he already showed that he’s pretty cool-minded for his age, and the way he coped with such an important and complex test was a further proof of that. Frankly, I would have liked seeing him in at least one ‘performance-oriented run’, with low fuel and Supersoft tyres like all the others did. Looking at the laptimes he posted with the harder compound, I’m sure that his performance would have surprised many”.