Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali says team looking to ‘react immediately’ after Australian GP show
Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali has recently stated that his team is looking to “react immediately” after their poor performance at the first race of the 2011 Formula 1 season, the Australian Grand Prix.
“There is no point in denying that we leave Australia with a sense of disappointment. Our performance level was not a match for that of the best, especially one of the Red Bulls. Now we will have to study everything carefully to work out what prevented us
from being as competitive as we had expected this weekend,” Domenicali said.
It was quite a disappointing performance by Ferrari as Fernando Alonso finished in 4th place behind Vitaly Petrov while Felipe Massa finished in 9th place which was later upgraded to the 7th place. The upgrade came as both
of the Sauber drivers ahead of him were disqualified from the Australian Grand Prix due to a technical infringement as per the rules of the International Automobile Federation (FIA).
Ferrari were looking pretty good during the pre-season testing period and it seemed that they were the only potential competitors for the 2011 Formula 1 championship alongside Red Bull Racing Team since McLaren and Mercedes GP were not looking reliable.
Nevertheless, McLaren turned the tables and gave a good performance at the Australian Grand Prix as they were the only team that looked strong enough to challenge Red Bull’s phenomenal pace.
Sebastian Vettel took the pole position after scoring the fastest time which was more than 7 tenths of a second faster than Lewis Hamilton. Vettel was unstoppable at the season opening race of 2011 as he led the pack throughout the race and finished more
than half a minute before Fernando Alonso.
As a result, Stefano has decided to head back to Europe to review the performance of Ferrari’s new car and hopefully look for some solutions before heading to Malaysia for the second race of the season.
“One of the main themes is the level of downforce at the front: we must find out why we did not get on track what was predicted by the data. One of the few bright points was reliability, especially on the engine side and with the KERS,” said Domenicali.
Alonso revealed later on that he faced a lot of problem generating heat into his front tyres while his teammate Felipe Massa spun at the first chicane during the final session of the qualifying round (Q3) during his pit lap.
However, Ferrari would have to come up with some major upgrades soon if they want to challenge for the titles as they are not as quick as the other top running teams of the season.
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