What the hell is wrong with Ferrari's F1 team

If Pat Fry did not offer to resign they should have sacked him ... hopeless, and witness how Williams are doing since he left!
Pete

 

Fingers crossed.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

Their first priority is to re establish team morale and cohesion. Firings rarely achieve that.

 

Okay I owe Pat an apology as he has never worked at Williams and did good stuff at McLaren.
Pete

 

They need someone with the authority to run the team.

Its beginning to look like the bad old days of Enzo, Dragoni and the ghost of Machievelli.

 

Agree. Team has always been more successful when non-Italians ran or influenced the team. Somewhat demoralising for an Italian company.

I guess this is where Alonso does not have the right attitude or temprament as he has been unable to do this, like Surtees and Lauda before him ... I guess though they had reasonable cars to start with.
Pete

 

OK, for the sake of debate, I'll play devils advocate.

Note I'm not 'anti' any motorsport, be it 2 or 4 wheels, open or closed wheels. Dayum, I'll even give the much maligned Formula E a chance! (They've actually got some reasonably big names signed up for it - a few 'failed' F1 jockeys among them.) Anyway;

Problem #1 there for me! You can swan in & out at your whim! Surely the protagonists should be committed to doing the '****ty' races as well as the cream?

Very true - It's a Formula after all. Have they gone too far? Possibly, but as I've said before, it's what the 'stakeholders' wanted.

Diverse, certainly.

More interesting? Not to me..... Many here (me included with my nostalgia hat on btw), rue the passing of the 16's, 12's, 10's, monster turbos and qualy engines etc.

I would love little more than they say something like "Max fuel flow rate is X kg/hr. No refueling. Beyond that, you can do what you want."

[I've tried to explain before why max flow rate is a better idea than capacity limits, so won't go there again.]

Then, if they want more efficiency, X becomes X less 10% in year two and so on.

A noble intent indeed! trouble is, one of them would get it right and the others pack up and go home. Costs would sky rocket. Only way round it would be to introduce the ridiculous (to me) BOP nonsense!

BOP is anathema to me! I do a better job than you, and ergo have to carry more weight? Or am not allowed to breathe properly? Or am forced to carry less gas than you?

All in order to make the racing closer? And some say F1 is artificial!

Design it, build it, race it. At least I know I'm not going to get ****ed if I do a better job than you! I doff my cap to Merc right now - they worked at it, they've (almost) got it right and are deservedly blowing the rest away. That's F1 IMO. Some years it's Ferrari, others Mclaren, other Williams etc. They're all racers, and all know the playing field isn't going to be adjusted because they did too good of a job!

Outside of any 'personal involvement' (which changes everything of course), seems to me LMP2 is for cast off LMP1 cars for wealthy privateers to make up the numbers. Who cares?

GTE could, I guess, be cool as they're based on 'road cars' (?). But, and I'm not even sure which class they ran in, didn't Aston Martin get screwed (or a bonus?) with tank capacity this year? Again, they want them to be close for the sake of the 'show', and ergo everyone runs to different criteria - tank capacity, breathing orifices, weight, seems all can be adjusted by the organizers at will.

Sorry, not for me!

Cheers,
Ian

 

Yes and who sits at the top??? 3 letters, guess LOL!

 

Absolutely correct!! In the meantime, they have in house the perfect leader: Coletta. He has proven time and again that he knows how to lead winners (cf: GT and AF Corse) but that might not meet with Mattiaci's desires.... His incompetence has not taken long to shine through... Just read his interviews!!!

Ferrari are worse off today than they were before Todt arrived in '93.....

The cars are all ugly, the noise is ugly and the politics are ugly

 

McLaren set sights on Alonso and Hamilton | Planet F1 | Formula One News

Supposed feelers put out. Silly season now starting to grow

 

On the other hand, this is hardly surprising, if we take into account:

- the situation of Fernando at Ferrari (Mattiacci recently said: we aim to be back among the winners in 2015, and among the title contenders in 2016...long wait for Fernando, isn't it?)
- the "special relation" between Lewis and McLaren
- the situation at McLaren.

Said in other words: which team needs a great driver? which great driver could be lured out of his contract? Then, two and two make four. We'll see.

Rgds

 

A man who, though wasn't able to fix them, very well knows the Scuderia's weaknesses.

Domenicali: Mercedes to stay top for long time - GPUpdate.net

 

Is Domenicali sacked from Ferrari as a whole or has he just been placed somewhere else inside the team?

 

With Mercedes far, far away and most of the car unaltered till the end of the season due testing bans and engine freezes, you not have to be Domenicali to know that the season is over for everybody.

 

My impression was gone from Ferrari all together. He surely has no competition clauses in the contract so he is taking a break.

Yes, though I'm sure he has more inside knowledge than many on this forum.

 

But I liked those days.
The Scuderia has never been the same since the Old Man died.
Now, Ferrari is like any other team.

 

No, the ****ty races would see less entries and be dropped out if necessary.
Natural selection .

At the moment, the teams and the sponsors are forced to go to places that are of no interest, just to satisfy Ecclestone's contract with countries where there is hardly public support and crowd attendance.

A Dutch GP would make more sense than the South Korea GP. Better a Catalonia GP (Spain) than a Turkish GP, etc...

 

The fuel flow rate would be the best formula in my book.


Most important, limit the aerodynamics in F1.
They are killing the racing and are the main reasons for costs spiralling out of control.
Get rid of all these aerodynamicist boffins, their ****dy wind tunnels.
Make the cars difficult to drive, faster in the straights and slower in the corners, as it should be! That would create more opportunities for overtaking and separate the boys from the men.

The great difference in F1 and MotoGP, is that MotoGP isn't plagued by aerodynamics, and talents can shine.

 

How true.
Even Luca knows it, as he is doing his best to impersonate some kind of "Old Man reincarnation", but he fells somewhat short of the target.

I remember a quote from Chris Amon which went something like this:
"Nigel Mansell said that for him, the first time he met the Old Man was an experience like meeting the Pope. But this is wrong, of course. There has been, and will be, other Popes: but there will ever be only one Enzo Ferrari".

Rgds

 

I don't think BOP was ever intended in F1.

In endurance GT, BOP allows cars of very different designs on the same grid by levelling -to a point- the advantages some may have (weight, size, capacity, Cx, etc...).
How could you have Viper, 458, 911, Corvette, Aston in the same race without it?
I think it works on the whole, and avoids to create more classes like we had in the past.

In GT3, BOP allows Porsche, Ferrari, Audi, Morgan, Nissan, Corvette, Bentley, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Camaro, etc.. to be in the same race. That's works well as well and provide good racing.

LMP2 are not "cast off" LMP1. They are purpose built cars.
At Le Mans, LMP2 had ORECA, Morgan and LIGIER chassis that were never intended for LMP1.
To avoid an arms race in LMP2, chassis have to me available to any one, with a price limit of $375,000, I believe. LMP2 provides good racing.

 

I loved those days but times change.
Comic opera just doesn't cut it now and it's because they're not run like other teams that's the problem.

 

Pat Fry was with McLaren, not Williams.

EDIT: My bad, saw you corrected it

 

That said, how is McLaren attractive? Honda engines? Meh. We don't know how they will be yet. Big gamble.

Right now, they have the all powerful Merc engine and are slower than Ferrari. RD's pitch to these top drivers must be Honda and the arrival Prodromou changing things...otherwise I struggle to see why a top driver would want to go there.

 

You're right, of course: the main attraction that McLaren could provide to Fernando is a way to escape his situation, IF he is fed-up with it.
It's a Top team (remember that the best car of 2012 was the McLaren, not the Red Bull) with an engine coming from a reputed company, this could be a new challenge...if Fernando is really fed-up with the Scuderia, that is.
Or Fernando could hope that McLaren will provide Lewis with an offer he can't refuse, and then get Lewis former seat at M.B?