Couple of F2007/FerrariF1 questions for the experts.

I have a couple of questions about ferraris strengths and weaknesses as a F1 team, and about their development.

1. How much of an effect is Ross' 1 year break going to have on reliability and development? This years engines had to run two races last year to be approved correct due to the engine development freeze? Last year I think most people agreed the F2006 engine was one of if not the most powerfull on the grid, so wouldn't they be alright in this regard. Reliability wise the engines were pretty good, even if all of us tifosi remember Japan. So engine wise Ferrari should be good right?

2. How strong is Ferrari's aero package historically? I know they have the wind tunnel on-site which gives them an advantage over a lot of teams, but I find it hard to believe teams like toyota have a hard time testing with their budget. So aero wise is Ferrari pretty strong, or have they made up for a mediocre aero department with drivers and raw power?

3. Do Ferraris normally have the best mechanical grip? I have never really heard anything about this. I imagine it's not horrible, but how do you differentiate the guy driving the car from the cars abilities?

4. Did Nigel actually leave? I kept hearing reports he was unhappy and wanted to take a year off with Ross Brawn, but I never heard a conclusion to the whole thing. How much of an effect will this have on the team.

5. Reliability, how much of this has been Ferrari or Michael's ability to find the limits of his machine. As you can imagine I'm asking this because of the guy taking michael's seat. We all know Kimi likes to break things, but how much of this was Mclaren and how much was him?

6. What is the relationship between Jean Todt and Luca DiMontizemello(sp?) like right now. Do you think Jeans new title/promotion has taken care of the bitterness over Michael's departure. Was there even any bitterness. I saw the speed tv coverage of the end of Monza, but were the commentators just hyping the whole "michael was forced to leave" thing? I read the artical in F1 magazine, but it seems like they tried to turn the whole situation into a Days of Our Lives soap opera. How will Jean and Luca's relationship affect the team. I can see Luca being more involved with Kimi driving now, it seems like he wants to develop him so he is more marketable. If Kimi won a few DCs he will become an international super star pretty quickly as young as he is and with the glamor associated with Ferrari.

7. For years these cars have been made for one person; Michael, now they are making cars for Kimi and Felipe, how will this affect the team? How does Kimi's driving style and car setup at McLaren differ from the car setup at Ferrari and Michael's typical setup? Will Kimi have problems like Rubino did when he went to Honda?

Now I know a lot of people think they can answer these questions but I really want the truth here. I watch F1 quite a bit, but I don't know enough about the politics of the team or the real details about the cars. Thanks in advance for the replies.

 

I think the cars are designed to meet the requirements of the rules and take advantage of any percieved "loopholes". IE the drivers job is to take that package and go with it. However a good driver/engineer team can tune a car to his advantage and liking.

I think you will get a lot of educated opinions but sometimes the partipants dont even know the "facts".

 

I was reading in F1 Racing that for the first half of the year the Cossie V8 was the most powerful but the Williams side of it couldn't do much with it. Impressive considering Cosworth's minuscule budget compared to say Toyota.

Ferrari engines were pretty much bulletproof. I believe the problems that Michael faced in the last two races were pretty one-off. The engine regs have not changed into 2007 and with a "frozen" engine specification, the same should continue. I think the Renaults had a bit more torque - they seem to get off the corners quicker.

I think Ferrari's aero work is awesome. They and the Renault guys are perhaps the best in the business. I think Ferrari is really awesome at the low downforce tracks - Monza, Indy, Canada. Also the cars seem to have usually the highest top speeds - indicating a very slippery shape. Renault seems to be recently innovating with new appendages - e.g. double spoiler in the front and very curvey shapes. They know what they are doing.

Ferrari hasn't really done as well in 2006 at the high downforce tracks like Monaco and Hungary. I believe this is more a function of the tires than anything else.

I think Toyota has the budget but they dont seem to know what they are doing.

I guess the Renault might be the best here with Ferrari a close second. Tires play a huge role here so really an excellent job by Ferrari may be negated by relatively poor performance of the Bstones vis-a-vis the Michelins. Next year it is going to be easier to judge this.

The driver seems to account for only 25% of the overall performance. Maybe in the wet races, the driver's contribution goes up to say 40%. The engine performance, tires, strategy all contribute to the victory.

Ross is one of the prime reasons for this though. Steve Matchett likes to say that Ross will favor reliability over performance every time. The approach is to build a good part and then continously improve it. I guess they are into the Kaizen approach of continous but small improvements.

By contrast McLaren Mercedes at least under Adrian Newey would try to revolutionize the process and suffered worse reliability. They would try a radical approach to gain 0.5 sec on the lap and then try and get it reliable. After a couple of blow-ups then they tend to turn down the engine revs, add lots of fuel, qualify midpack and struggle to get points. Poor approach.

I think Mclaren builds very fragile cars. How many instances have we seen mirrors flying off a car, how many cases have there been rear wing failures. Mclaren seems to have the same design philosophy as Lotus It is true that Kimi is hard on the cars. But he is pushing a car that is bog slow over its limit. I think he will handled the stronger Ferrari better.

Every driver's style is different - Michael and Rubens drove very differently and set their cars up differently. Obviously Ferrari would favor Michael's imput over Rubens if they had to make a critical design decision that the two drivers disagreed upon.

One good thing about Kimi is that he can make a bad car look good. I amsure he can drive thru any setup and maximise it. He is that good. I do not know how Kimi and Massa's style compare.

My only concern is that Kimi has very little seat time going into the first GP - a lot lesser than Alonso or Massa.

 

Excellent Post Sameer.

 

This is anyone’s guess. Ross has been a major contributor to the Ferrari team but, as he's been there a number of years his absence might not have as much an effect as we might think. I say that because I'm assuming within those years he and Todt should have solidified the design and development process so that it's not reliant on any one individual. This is what Ron's been doing over at McLaren and why he isn't worried about not having a "star" designer. I suppose it's the like having the Borg design your car, you know the collective whole is better than relying on one single individual. That's in regard to chassis development though. From what I understand Ross never really had any involvement with engine development. To most designers the engine is just a supporting device to marry the tub to the gear box. Engine development is overseen by another individual all together and it's a separate department. I don't see a problem with engine development or reliability. I think the real issue with loosing Ross will be not in development but race strategy. Not having him on the pit wall crunching the numbers on the fly will be where Ferrari will feel his absence the most.

Recently Ferrari's always had one of the strongest aero packages on the grid. They've been know for pioneering not only straight line development but also focusing on pitch, yaw and roll. How a car behaves in a nice straight line is one thing, but how it behaves once in a turn while running over the curbs is another can of worms all together. Toyota last year began to address some of these issues and I'm not too sure if this didn't lead them astray.

This I have no idea about. The key to making any car, road or race, handle well is to keep the tires in contact with the pavement as much as possible. Most specifically to keep the tires within their proper operating temperature range. This gets into bump, rebound, camber, caster, bump-steer, anti-dive, anti-squat and other issues. Weight distribution of the chassis also plays a large roll in this and then you'll be throwing in weight application from aero downforce. It would seem fairly straight forward until the aero guys start saying that they need to raise the front keel an extra 5mm to get the most out of the front wing and then the chassis designers have to come up with a compromise for the front suspension geometry they'd like to have. Considering all of these issues along with aero brings us back to the point of question 1 of relying on one individual for the overall design. Can one man, or woman, really stay on top of all of these issues and deliver good solid changes within the shortest amount of time? In the past I think they could but with competition being so fierce and the need to shorten development time I feel having semi-independent design teams working in unison is the best way to go. As I've said McLaren has been able to implement this kind of design strategy with some good effect (they're usually very, very good about turning around a poor performing car in a very short period of time) but I've got no real idea if Ferrari is able to perform the same kind of turnaround.

From what I've read, which hasn't been much, he's left. Some here on the board I know don't feel his absence will be felt much but, I feel he's been an integral part of the development of the chassis. I'm not sure if I'm worried so much that he's left or rather about the unseen reasons for his departure. Ferrari in the past was its own worst enemy. It had been known for infighting and general "Italian" management. I know that's not PC in today’s world but, the Italians have never been known for their train schedules much less tight management.

Again, Ferrari and other teams tend to keep their cars close to their chest on all of these types of questions. I don't think anyone would disagree that MS has been integral if not one of the main architects of Ferrari's dominance these past years. He, Todt and Braun were always working off of the same page and always in the same direction. That direction was always having MS win the driver’s championship first and constructors second. If you get the first the second one will almost always follow.

Kimi's hard on his machinery. That's just the way he is. Different drivers get around the track differently. While I think some of McLaren's woes might have been attributed to Kimi's driving I think it has to do more with McLaren not really building the proper car for Kimi as Ferrari had done with MS then Kimi not driving the McLaren they way they'd designed it to be driven. Cars should be designed for their drivers. If a race team is designing a car and then wanting their driver to adapt to it I don't think they'll do very well. McLaren have also been known to build "light" cars. Not very good for a driver who likes to go at it like Kimi.

I have some thoughts on this but I think someone like Carol might be better off answering it. I personally don't think Todt was happy at the end of last season and I really do believe Luca made a power play. How could this happen you ask? Reference the last part of my answer to question no 4.

Your guess is as good as mine. Personally I don't think they'll have too much of a problem adapting the car to Kimi or Felipe if they've got a good flexible design process. I think the "problems" that Rubino had going to Honda had more to do with him not having the best car under him anymore and his true driving talent was being shown. Many here will say that if Masa has the same thing happen to him he'd be no better than a mid pack runner also. I think Kimi's driving is more like Senna's than Prost's. That means like Senna he's able to drive through a deficiency on the car where as someone like Prost would need the car to be perfect to exact the most out of the car and himself. Prost was a better development driver than Senna in my opinion but I'd rather have Senna in the car come race weekend. MS was able to do both. I don't think he had the quickness Senna had but he certainly was a better all-round driver. I don't think at this point Kimi is that well rounded. I'd say FA is, but hopefully Ferrari will help Kimi in this respect and he'll continue to grow as a driver.

 

Wow, thanks for the responses guys! Those were exactly what I was looking for. I know it takes time to write this stuff and I really appreciate it.

Now when we get into this discussion of the multiple people to make the design process more efficient, when do you loose efficiency due to the beauracratic nature of such a system. I remember hearing in Speed that Honda was having problems with their "board of directors" approach to development. In fact I believe they were questioning whether such an approach could ever work as well as having a guys like Ross on the pit lane that know everything about the car.

I do agree that there must be some sort of break down into departments. I mean aero has to be a 24/7 type of job, especially since they customize the package to the tracks. At what point does these teams need a leader that is knowledgeable enough in every department to be able to facilitate them working together. One example might be if aero is asking for a change from the chasis guys, but the chasis guys think the change will slow the car down in the long run or whatever, who makes the final decision? I would think that guy needs to know the car inside and out as well as racing in general.

This stuff is so interesting. F1 really is the best sport on the planet.

 

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