Ferrari aiming for a performance boost in the Turkish Grand Prix
Ferrari chief designer, Nikolas Tombazis was confident of getting a performance boost in the Turkish Grand Prix, which kicks off on Sunday, May 8th, 2011.
Tombazis did admit however, that the team wouldn’t be able to take a significant step further from the previous race. The Maranello based outfit has been able to score 50 points from the first three races of the ongoing season and are trailing by another
55 to the championship leaders Red Bull.
Tombazis said, “In Istanbul we'll have new front and rear wings and modifications in the brakes. But our car has a lot to recover: we've had wind tunnel problems and other problems in our methodology. We are improving on both fronts, but there is still some
way to go.”
The chief designer claimed that wind tunnel was not the only problem for Ferrari. He stated, “That's just one half of the problem: even if we didn't have problems with the tunnel, we wouldn't have won the first three races. From the tests to the first race,
the package didn't work the way we wanted. From then on the investigation on why the tunnel fooled us started.”
Tombazis also blamed the lack of an aggressive design to be the reason behind a bad start to the 2011 season. He claimed that the team had adopted a very conservative approach towards its overall aerodynamics package, which has cost a lot of speed to the
scarlet car.
He gave an example of Red Bull’s flexible wing, which had been under a scanner in the start of this year. The aggressive approach of the defending champions could have been costly for them, had it not been approved by the sport’s governing body, Federation
Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). However, it paid off for Red Bull and they have started their 2011 campaign dominantly.
Reigning champion, Sebastian Vettel, managed to win the opening two races in Australia and Malaysia respectively. He had a mixed race in China, but ended up on the podium with a second place finish. His team-mate, Mark Webber didn’t get off to an ideal start
though, as he struggled a lot with his Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS).
Although Ferrari were expected to give a tough time to Red Bull, they have been no way near the front-runners. The Italian team looked strong in the winter testing, but things changed once the season officially kicked off. Both drivers, Fernando Alonso and
Felipe Massa, have been unable to score a single podium finish, which is a huge concern for the team.
On the other hand, McLaren have come a long way to catch up Red Bull. The Vodafone sponsored team was below par in the pre-season tests, but managed some strong results in the season until now.
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