Ferrari’s Nikolas Tombazis says his team was conservative on their car’s design – Formula 1 News
Ferrari’s 2011 car designer, Nikolas Tombazis has revealed that the car, Ferrari150° Italia, was made with a conservative set of mind. He further added that the team did not push hard on some areas, which left the door open for misfortunes to creep in the
legend team.
After winning sixteen constructors’ championships in the past, the Ferrari team has not been in prime form in the 2011 season.
Nikolas explains that the team’s downfall was due to the fact that some areas of development were left undone. He said, “Unfortunately, we cannot claim this accusation is entirely without foundation. Maybe we were a bit too passive in our approach, we did
not push hard enough in some areas of development and unfortunately, the results can be seen on track.”
Ferrari team had their best run in the 2011 pre-season testing sessions, where they bagged maximum mileage and showed good reliability. Speed was still an issue for the team, but the car was altogether complete to challenge the likes of Red Bull or McLaren.
As soon as the season kicked-off in Australia, the Italian team was way behind their competitors, Red Bull and McLaren. Both the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa, were way off- pace on the circuit.
The same below-par performance was seen in the next two rounds of the 2011 season in Malaysia and China, respectively. Alonso’s car had some technical failures, as the Spaniard had a rear wing problem in both races after which he was driving a conventional
car, while all the other drivers were using the modern over-taking toll.
The good news for Ferrari is that no middle-ranked team was able to capitalise on the poor performance of the Italian team and bag some points. Ferrari team is still third on the constructors’ table, with 50 points.
Ferrari has had lots of time to think about their car’s design and structure, to live up to their name in the Formula 1 sport. The Italian based team had three weeks to prepare before the European part of the season kicks-off in Istanbul, with Turkish Grand
Prix on May 8.
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