Ferrari approaches Barcelona cautiously

If, by Luca di Montezemolo’s own admission, Scuderia Ferrari’s start to the season has not followed the expected scenario, the team from Maranello has nevertheless managed to limit the damage, with Fernando Alonso only 10 points behind the leader of the drivers’ championship and the team occupying 4th place in the constructors’ championship. Nonetheless, the start of the season is clearly below expectations for the Rossa, which hopes, starting in Barcelona, to find reasons to hope: “We only have two European races before heading to Canada, but it’s as if the championship becomes more intense from now on,” confides Felipe Massa. “The three-week break since Bahrain was very important for us, for everyone at Ferrari to work hard on improving our car. So I hope we will benefit from a better car from now on, starting with Spain. It’s a nice track, even if we all know it very well, having driven more kilometers here than anywhere else. But it’s a demanding track where you need to have a good car if you want to perform well, and moreover, if the car works well here, it generally means it will perform well almost everywhere.”

However, during the FIA press conference held on Thursday, Fernando Alonso wanted to put into perspective the importance of the changes made to the F2012 on the eve of his home Grand Prix: “Our car is not really different from before. We don’t have a big improvement, although we have some new features. At Mugello, during the tests, we mainly tried different settings and other things that we couldn’t work on during the pre-season tests, so it was about completing our winter work. Some things we tried at Mugello worked well, others less so.”

For the Maranello firm, the goal is primarily to start again on a healthier basis, and the Spaniard thinks the team is better prepared today than it was before Melbourne: « We have new aerodynamic parts and other developments, but we have to wait and see where we stand after the race. Because we are Ferrari, there seems to be a lot of expectations, but other teams have also developed their cars. What we have here in Barcelona is just a step, and we must continue to improve our performance for qualifying and the Monaco race, the one in Canada, and all those that follow. This is only the first of many steps, and if it’s not enough, we’ll have to work harder for Monaco and be even more aggressive in our approach. We will never give up in May, not after only four races. »

Felipe Massa also insists that it will be necessary to wait for the verdict in Barcelona to be able to measure the real progress made by the Prancing Horse: « The most important thing concerning the progress we have made is not so much the work we have done but the work done by the other teams. We will use some parts here that we tested in Mugello, but not all, and we will also try other developments that we did not evaluate in Mugello during free practice. Until we have evaluated everything, it will be difficult to know what progression we can hope to see on the timed lap, but it would be nice to think that we can gain half a second. We must continue to work tirelessly, trying new parts that will make us progress more than the other teams. I hope we will be happier this Sunday than we have been in the last races. »

The Catalan circuit will also be a good test for the Italian team, with the track’s characteristics making it one of the season’s benchmarks with its large curves and fast sequences, and where overtaking is rather difficult. However, this is no longer necessarily the case according to some drivers, including Fernando Alonso: « I looked at the numbers and in recent years, on this circuit, we had 4 or 5 overtakes during the Grand Prix, but last year, there were 57. In the past, starting from pole position here assured victory 60% of the time, but that’s no longer the case. […] As usual, we will give our 100%, but Formula One is not a science, it’s a sport. We will try to do our best, work hard on every detail, and with optimism, achieve the best possible result. »