How Ferrari's F10 Went Wrong And Can It Rebound?
Ferrari’s season commenced with limited success on tracks which did not seem to stabilize or improve with the passage of time. Furthermore, the lady luck does not seem to be with the Italian titans either. They have all the major attributes and potential to win mega events and that is what makes it more frustrating and annoying for them to be where they are now. But the all important question for them is to figure out the underlying cause of such repeated failure and as a subsequent step to ascertain the way forward which can somehow miraculously put them back on track.
Prior to the start of the season, it seemed that Ferrari was confident that they had a masterpiece for the tracks. However, there expectations and estimates were all put to test and rest by Red Bull.
Having said that, it cannot be denied that as far as the pace is concerned, Ferrari was leading amongst its competitors in Bahrain where it did, in fact registered its much awaited victory over Red Bull, nevertheless due to a scoring error.
Since their victory in Bahrain, things have been haywire for Ferrari as they were overwhelmed and overtaken by their competitors, as a result of which its standing dropped to the bottom of the table amongst the top four speed machines. Now they face an uphill task of restraining Renault during the next round in Canada.
The Turkish Grand Prix was also a failure for Ferrari where they were surprisingly lacking in pace and Fernando Alonso was unable to achieve the Q3, where he and Felipe Massa were left competing for the bottom positions having earlier been defeated by McLaren and Red Bull. This eventually lead to their team boss Stefano Domenicali, conceding the fact that their team’s performance has been way below par by stating that it had “stepped back” and requires to “address the issues” they are faced with. Rightly so!
It seemed that Stefano Domenicali placed the blame of their loss in Turkish Grand Prix on Scuderia insisting that he must become proactive “immediately” by criticizing it as substandard performance. He further stressed the point that they are still confident in the team Ferrari, as he has the same people and same working format and methodology which helped them in maintaining the winning combination earlier and there is no reason why they cannot collectively work to assist Ferrari in achieving the top spot once again.
Moreover, he briefed the journalists after the Turkish Grand Prix that Ferrari prides itself in being creative and working on out of the box thinking patterns.
So what actually happened to them? Where did they lose the plot? It seems that their downfall took a start somewhere in the mid of 2009 following their decision to halt the evolution of their car for that specific season and concentrating on becoming F10.
It seemed like a logical and reasonable move at that time due to their basic malfunction in joining the double diffuser with the prevalent design of that time, which eventually afforded them the luxury of time. So they can extend on their design and development efforts in search of a coherent machine, which could bear the brunt during the title for this current year.
It is argued by some experts that although the move with regards to the double diffuser would have made sense but there may have been room for more improvement on the development side by consistent betterment and investigation. In the light of the revised regulations on aerodynamics released in the year 2009, had they not halted the development. By doing this, Ferrari may have missed a trick or two by not being able to test the looping, as it lost track time, e.g. in respect of splitters and front and back wing designs. This, it is believed could have lead to more innovative and sophisticated machine on the whole.
Similarly, their stoppage of the development phase coincided with the arrival of ‘F-duct’ which led to other missed opportunity on potentially developing the machine further. Moreover, F-duct consumed a lot of their resource as a result of which they did not have adequate personnel for their basic operations.
As per the prevalent title position, it seems Ferrari is still in with a good chance and can make it happen. Given their omissions and wrong decisions at the wrong time, they will have to cause and ensure that they keep abreast with developments to maximize their chances of achieving the top spot and then maintain it.
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