Where did Ferrari go wrong?

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Written by Kate Walker

Tuesday, 31 August 2010 19:08

The Belgian Grand Prix weekend wasn’t one of Ferrari’s greatest moments.

Star driver Fernando Alonso qualified in P10 for Sunday’s race nearly got taken out on the first lap by Rubens Barrichello, and then retired under his own steam with seven laps remaining.

Felipe Massa fared much better – the Brazilian qualified in P6 and finished in P4 – but as the team made plain in Hockenheim, he is there to contribute to the constructors’ points haul, and not to fight for the 2010 World Drivers’ Championship. Having already decided to put all of their eggs in Alonso’s basket, it does the Scuderia little good to see their number two outscore the star turn.

But no one can control a driver’s performance relative to his teammate, and as far as the constructors’ standings go, points are points. Ferrari’s real problem at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps was the sudden and inexplicable loss of pace suffered by the team.

Fernando Alonso dominated both practice sessions on Friday. The Spaniard was the fastest man on track in all conditions, and his pace looked like an advert for a Ferrari walkover due to last the weekend. And a walkover was just what the Scuderia needed.

Earlier in the season, fans and pundits were beginning to write off Ferrari’s chances. They were slightly behind in the development race, had suffered from a number of poor strategic calls, and were very much behind McLaren and Red Bull in both drivers’ and constructors’ standings. But the team battled through, turned the car around, and drove an error-free race in Germany to deliver a 1-2 finish to the Tifosi.

And that was where it all went wrong. Fernando Alonso passed his teammate on track to take the eventual win, and the stewards punished the team for what was widely perceived to be a blatant violation of the team orders ban.

Ferrari may have been fast in Germany, the team may have brought home its first uninherited win of the season, but the Scuderia were making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Instead of praise for their impressive about-face in the development race, newspapers screamed of scandal, of cheating, of a loss of honour and credibility.

Red Bull were so dominant at the Hungaroring that Spa was Ferrari’s first chance to redeem themselves on track. A win in Belgium would see the Scuderia on a high in the run up to the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, Ferrari’s home race. If the Belgian weekend was a rip-roaring success for the team, the world’s media would focus on Ferrari’s resurgence, and not the team’s forthcoming World Motor Sport Council hearing.

But the weekend failed to live up to expectations.

Fernando Alonso’s difficult Sunday began during Saturday’s qualifying session, when a mis-timed run on the wrong tyres saw the Spaniard qualify in P10. But teammate Felipe Massa, who qualified in P6, was half a second slower than Lewis Hamilton in P2. Ferrari’s qualifying advantage over McLaren, which had been obvious in Hungary and Germany, was nowhere to be seen.

Speaking after Sunday’s race, Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali said he was unsure where the F10’s pace had gone. “We must recognise that our performance in this grand prix did not match our expectations and interrupted a positive trend that began a few races ago,” Domenicali said. “We have to understand why immediately and take the necessary counter-measures. We need to understand exactly what has happened, in terms of the direction of the set-up that we were taking, or if the developments we brought here, in the conditions that we had, were right or wrong.

“We need to be very cautious, because two races ago McLaren seemed to be suffering a lot. And now it seemed here that they were very strong. Race by race the scenario is changing so quickly that it’s difficult to predict something. It’s important to try to be there, because with these conditions, everything can happen,” Domenicali concluded.

Formula 1 is a fast-moving sport in more ways than one. With the development race, the variety of tracks on offer, and the threat of human error hanging over every team, the war is not lost until the mathematics make victory impossible. Mathematically, Ferrari are still in the title hunt.

But if the WMSC choose to punish the team for the Hockenheim team orders scandal by stripping the Scuderia of the points gained in Germany, the championships will be nearly out of reach. If Ferrari do not manage a better result in Monza, then it will be much harder to make up lost ground when the teams are overseas for the final races of the season.

There is no magic button to fix Ferrari’s woes – and the woes themselves may have been limited to the bizarre conditions on offer in Spa last weekend – but in such a close-fought season no team can afford to suffer another weekend like the Scuderia’s. Kate Walker Girlracer magazine

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