The car is average at best being driven by the most complete driver in F1 and someone who is in his last year at Ferrari although today he was in the same zip code as Fred so good for Phil. Issue will be if ferrari's promised major updates will deliver the goods. If so, we will be in for a fabtastic season as I want to see as many teams as possible fighting for victories.
What I find amazing is since the record breaking days of 2000 - 2007 the team was in place to construct championship winning cars for many years despite key personnel leaving, so the structure of the team should have been in place already. Luca Cordero di Montezemolo decision not to promote Ross Brawn to team principal to replace Jean Todt was a momumental mistake of biblical proportions, as a result he left and the team therefore had to rely on understudies, in true italian style they reorganised this into organised chaos which I suspect Pat Fry is trying to untangle like a bowl of pasta. Once again its going to take years for the team to recover and it will only do that when it poaches talent from other teams who understand the current design / car philosophy. The tyres are a major issue and Micheal Schumacher has a point with his critiscism of Pirelli, It does make for a more spectacular race, but it is somewhat false. It produced a mid stream car because nobody was in charge (with authority and strength of character) to pull the different departments together.
+1, and also, if i can recall, Mac engineers brought into Maranello never produced a wdc winning car.....leting aldo costa go, was another big mistake IMO.....at least someone else is profiting from that...
+1 the only way this is going to get sorted is to get a strong team manager, the only man for the job may be Flav, at least he has a track record of getting the job done. Since 2008 apart from a blip in 2010 the team has been on the slide.
Nevermind Alonso and Schumacher on the same team, Flav and Luca? Within one week one would be dead, the other in jail
I think from what i understand from various threads is that the suspension and the exhaust layout is the flaw here...
Personally i dont buy that, tyres and pit stop strategy are the main factors. In the Bridgestone days somebody starting from 11th had no chance of getting a podium finish, now you have a chance to win it. I cannot remember Ferrari ever not bothering to run a stint in Q3 to save tyres. as a previous poster has said the team is in decline and will continue unlless somebody kicks some italian butts. I would love to see Luca kick his own butt first!! +1 on Aldo Costa too, he must be laughing his head off by now. If somebody as influental as Rory Byrne considers him to be the rising talent / protegee, then you listen very carefully. To lose Paulo Martinelli, Rory Byrne, Ross Brawn, Jean Todt, Nigel Stepney etc (dont condone what he did but he was good, unfortunately he suffered from Luca's desire to get Italians back in charge and wasnt promoted when others went up the ladder) in a short pace of time was a disaster but could have been overted. As usual its a witch hunt and the least able to defend themselves gets the chop.
I've heard rumors that Ferrari were going to roll out a new car at in-season testing, and indeed there were some new parts and a lot of optimism expressed. They also said that there were more significant upgrades coming for Barcelona. So, just how "new" will this car be when they show up to race there?
An all new car introduced mid season is a practical impossibility these days. Beside the time needed for a total redesign any major chassis alteration requires new crash tests. The best that can be done is to identify the problem(s), fix the related components and integrate the fixes into the complex system that today's F1 car is. So, how new? One hopes just new enough but so too new as to create more problems.
