Ferrari has taken a step back
Since the start of the 2011 season, the Scuderia has consistently lagged behind the leading teams. But more worrisome still, Ferrari is the only top team to have posted slower qualifying times compared to 2010.
Formula 1 engineers, to gauge the intrinsic potential of a car, primarily rely on qualifying times rather than race times. With this obvious rule, it is easy to see that Ferrari’s pure speed is below that of its competitors. The Italian magazine *Autosprint* conducted an investigation on the Chinese Grand Prix (the latest Grand Prix). In 2010, Vettel secured pole position with Red Bull thanks to a lap completed in 1’34’558. This year, the German driver again achieved the best time with a 1’33’706 lap. Vettel thus improved by 0’852 compared to 2010. He and his team lowered the bar by almost a second.
Jenson Button, who had set the fastest time for McLaren last year, improved his time by about half a second: 1’34’421 compared to 1’34’979, a difference of 0’558. What about Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari, which was best placed on the Shanghai grid? While the Spaniard clocked a 1’34’913 in his Ferrari in 2010, he could only manage 1’35’119 this year, losing two-tenths! Why has Ferrari taken a step back, while others are getting faster?
It seems today that the Ferrari 150° Italia is the only car in the lineup that has poorly negotiated the change of tire supplier from Bridgestone to Pirelli. An irony for an Italian team, as some Italian media have already pointed out. Once again, this is reminiscent of the difficulties that the Renault team encountered in 2007 following the change from Michelin to Bridgestone tires across the board. In this vein, the first to be blamed is the wind tunnel in Maranello. Yet it seems that this structure (previously calibrated at 50% scale until now) has posed problems for Scuderia. This would explain why Ferrari has been using the wind tunnel of the former Toyota team in Cologne for some time. Probably waiting for its own entity to be properly recalibrated.
When was the last “made by Ferrari” innovation copied by the competition? Already in 2008, with the hole in the nose of the Italian single-seaters. This lack of creativity thus indicates a conservatism and a strict adherence to regulations, which all other teams nevertheless strive to circumvent.
But time is of the essence, and the lack of support that Scuderia needs to recover is no small matter.
| GP China Qualifying Times | 2010 Times | 2011 Times | Difference | |
| 1 | Red Bull (Vettel) | 1’34’558 | 1’33’706 | – 0’852 |
| 2 | McLaren (Button) | 1’34’979 | 1’34’421 | – 0’558 |
| 3 | Ferrari (Alonso) | 1’34’913 | 1’35’119 | + 0’206 |
