Formula One news
Back to the drawing board for Ferrari
06 April 2009The Ferrari team was both shocked and disappointed to leave the Malaysian Grand Prix with still no points in the bag. As both cars had failed to finish in Round 1, the Maranello-based team was looking to be in better shape for Malaysia, with both cars topping the final practice session on Friday. Another failure to hassle the scoreboard, though, has resulted in serious planning taking place within the organisation.
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| A strategic pit stop error cost Räikkönen's race in Malaysia |
After a double retirementment in Australia a week earlier, the reigning constructors' World Champions' challenge was hindered at Sepang on Saturday, as badly timed tactics meant Massa qualified a lowly sixteenth; on Sunday, Räikkönen's race was destroyed, as were his tyres, as the team elected to switch the Finn to wets too soon before the arrival of the downpour.
"We are very disappointed because, once again today, we leave a circuit empty handed," team principal Stefano Domenicali said. "With hindsight, it's clear that we took some wrong decisions, especially in Kimi's case at his first pit stop; the information we had at the time was that the storm was due to hit very shortly, when in actual fact it took a few more minutes to come."
As the 2007 champion slipped from fifth to fifteen in the Grand Prix, Felipe Massa's car was changed from full wets to intermediates, just as the very heavy rain did finally come. "Felipe was very unlucky," Domenicali continued. "With another forty seconds or so, he could have stayed on track with the extreme wet tyres, finishing in a good position at the end of the race. Clearly we have to extricate ourselves from this situation, without panicking, but with every one of us taking on our responsibilities; we have to dig deep and react, starting immediately - we have to change our mentality and accept that we are in a different situation to those of the past, and we therefore have to tackle it with a different approach, both on track and at base in Maranello."
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| Positive change can't come soon enough for Luca Baldisserri |
Team manager Luca Baldisserri was hiding nothing after the day on which team had scored no points from the first two races, for the first time since 1992. "Another disastrous race, and we can't make any excuses for it," he admitted. "Once again today we tried to second-guess what might happen, and every time the opposite happened, turning the race into a continual struggle to make up for that and, in the end, we finished empty-handed. In the dry our race pace was not really exceptional, but it did reflect what was our true potential today - now we must try to turn things around and get out of this situation in a hurry."
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