2011 German GP: Will Ferrari still be able to challenge Red Bull after return of blown diffuser?
Ferrari are one of the top running teams of Formula 1 in 2011 without a shadow of a doubt. They have been challenging for podiums, pole positions and even race wins as well at most of the races of the 2011 Formula 1 season.
However, they are not as dominant as they used to be back in the early 2000s, they are not as competitive as they were in the late 2000s, and they are definitely not a championship winning team at least for this season.
The main reason why this is happening is that they did not come up with a good car and on top of that, Red Bull Racing came up with a dominant car which is not only faster than Ferrari, but it is also faster than McLaren which is another championship winning,
established team of the sport.
Red Bull Racing have a technical director who has enabled teams like McLaren and Williams to win the championship during his time in the team and since he is with them now, it seems that his aerodynamics skills are working at their best once again.
RBR is headed by Christian Horner who is one of the ‘highlighted’ names in the sport and the team is definitely doing an amazing job as they are clearly the best team at both the fast and technical circuits of the sport. Other than that, they have been coming
up with the best race strategies at most of the venues.
The main reason for their dominance has been their qualifying pace though which is clearly faster than both Ferrari and McLaren. After the off-throttle blown diffusers were banned at the British Grand Prix, it was believed that RBR’s pace would be affected
the most but quite unexpectedly, McLaren suffered the most as a result of that ban while Red Bull’s performance did not change much.
Ferrari on the other hand were not affected much either but their car was performing much better than it was before as a result of which, there were rumours that the banning of off-throttle blown diffusers was the main reason for it.
Fernando Alonso secured the race win despite the fact that he started from 3rd place on the grid and that was clearly because of his unique race strategy rather than pace.
Ferrari have been quite fast and one has to admit, that they have been faster than McLaren during the qualifying sessions to say the least. Alonso was just 1 tenth of a second slower than the two Red Bull Racing drivers at the qualifying session at Silverstone
while the two McLarens were way off the pace.
Other than that, Fernando and Felipe were pretty quick at the European Grand Prix during the qualifying session as well which means that they are improving their car and it was a solid race performance which earned them the victory rather than the off-throttle
blown diffuser ban.
Therefore, at the upcoming German Grand Prix, Ferrari, RBR and probably McLaren as well are again going to be fighting it out for victory and at least Ferrari and RBR are going to be quite close during the qualifying session.
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