Thursday, April 28, 2011

Harsh critic in Italy over Ferrari's anemic car


Italian Auto Sprint put thoroughly down all Maranello's accomplishments in their issue on Tuesday.

According to the paper 150 Italia -car's anemic aerodynamics is of such class that Ferrari only has two choices out of which one is hidious and the other one is horrible.

The hidious option is to try and catch up with the car's three months belated car project and develop it into more competitive. They say that Ferrari still only analyses their mistakes while their competitors are working fulltime making new updates to their cars.

The horrible option again would be to do what they did two years ago: stop the current car's development work and invest everything into next year. According to the paper this would be horrible for both the drivers as for the sponsors who have invested so much especially in Fernando Alonso.

– Although Red Bull would retire in the next races McLaren is also too far away to be reached by Ferrari. Ferrari has to battle with Mercedes and pray that Renault won't come cruising past them from behind, the verdict says about the current car.

Their attempt to improve their competitiveness in China didn't bring any results. Auto Sprint describes Ferrari as the red crab going backwards while the lead is improving.

As basis they compared the China-qualification from last year: Red Bull was now 0,85 and McLaren 0,55 seconds faster while the 'red crab' was 0,2 seconds slower than last year.

The magazine accuses Ferrari of making two basic mistakes. One is failing in estimation and the other one is arrogance.

The estimation went wrong when Ferrari abandoned the elastic front wing they had developed. Technical Manager Aldo Costa had admitted that they had worked with a front wing that bended more closer to the track but they gave it up because they didn't think it would have passed FIA's strictest test.

Now they are working long days in Maranello so that they could get as soon as possible a front wing that works the same way Red Bull's wing works. Yet it requires a lot of time to get it to function in a similar way because the wing changes all air flows in the car, which again requires in practice re-development of the whole chassis.

The accusation of arrogance again comes from Ferrari's decision to continue with the traditional suspension while seven other teams followed Red Bull's suspension-idea. Auto Sprint lists that the only teams who are in the same camp with Ferrari when it comes to their thinking are Hispania, Virgin and Sauber, who has to use the rear end inherited from Ferrari.

– When has some other team used Ferrari's development work the last time? It was in 2008 when Ferrari had the hole in the nose. After that nobody has even tried to copy Ferrari's ideas, Auto Sprint shoots.

According to the paper Ferrari sank down in the problems starting from year 2009 when testing was limited with a harsh hand and banned altogether during the season.

Also the problems in the windtunnel from 1988 are only highlighted. According to the paper Maranello's windtunnel is too short and everytime they test a car there they have to make artificial corrections to their calculations.

However KERS worked well in Ferrari. The paper reminds that it was KERS, which put Ferrari back in the winning strike when Räikkönen made the victoriuos pass with additional powers in Spa in 2009.

Turun Sanomat, Rooma

PERTTI LEPISTÖ


Courtesy: Nicole

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