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After two back to back races in Melbourne and Sepang, it’s now clear that Ferrari is not the fastest car anymore. In fact they are not even a contender to win the races. But it seems they are still not aware of that. They continue to behave like they are the strongest team as they were before. Yesterday they destroyed Massa’s chances for race, in the first session of Qualifying by not leaving pits for the last time to save tires and today they put extreme wet tires on Raikkonen’s car, while its still bone dry. I cannot believe how Ferrari management came to this point. Even Force India would not do the same in similar conditions. It was clearly a gamble that didn’t work, but usually you gamble when your chances are poor. But it wasn’t the case at that moment. Raikkonen was fifth and he had a good chance of scoring some points or even be at podium with a good strategy call, if you think even Button did four pit stops and still won the race. I could understand if they put the intermediates but it was obvious that the extreme wets cannot survive more than a couple of laps in bone dry conditions. Massa’s case was also a big disappointment. He was on extreme wet tires while everybody was in a hurry to change to intermediates. Only 40 seconds after he changed his tires to intermediates the rain increased and he had to pit again for extreme wets. He would have been in a very strong position if he could wait one more lap. But it was again a wrong call by Ferrari’s pit wall.
This is not the first time that Ferrari doing strategic errors. It’s started to happen just after Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher left the team. Remember Fuji 2007, Silverstone 2008, Hungary 2007, etc. None of these errors were unavoidable and even small teams do not do this kind of basic errors at any time. But it seems like this is becoming a habit for Ferrari. When they find themselves to chose one of the ways in an unpredictable condition no matter what, they always chose the wrong way. This shouldn’t be the case in a team like Ferrari with very high standards.
So, it’s time to change their approach and mentality. They need to react very quick in all areas which they are weak and review their mistakes to make sure it will not happen again. Their race pace is one second behind Brawn’s and they are now fighting at the midfield. Also they have reliability issues, which is another area that they need to work very hard. It’s believed that, Ferrari has two parallel development programs at Maranello. One of them is the development of the current car F60 and the other one is the development of a double decker diffuser. Since Ferrari’s rear end is not suitable for such a diffuser, they have to change a lot of components at the rear end like gear box, engine cover and suspension which will not be easy. They are now in a very tricky condition, because if double-decker diffuser is banned at the upcoming FIA hearing, all of their efforts on the new diffuser will be wasted. Otherwise they will have to wait for basically a new car, while the protested teams already have one and they can continue to develop their cars with using all of their resources.
They will probably have small aerodynamic updates for China but for a big step forward they have to wait until European races. By the way other teams are also developing their new diffuser and it seems this season the race will continiue also at the factories.
A really right and good explanation about Ferrari’s bad conditions this year. It’s about the whole team in my opinion. Drivers are also careless and irresponsible. Kimi, is just a driver. Nothing more. Massa a bit spoiled guy in my opinion. He is always accusing the team.