scuderiafan
11th July 2011, 16:04
Ferrari says it will not get carried away with dreaming it is back in World Championship contention, despite Fernando Alonso's British Grand Prix victory.
The Spaniard delivered Ferrari's first win of 2011 in mixed conditions at Silverstone where, after capitalising on Red Bull's mistakes in the pits, he drove away at the head of the pack.
Yet although a raft of updates - including a new rear wing, diffuser and brake ducts - delivered a tangible step forward in pace, team principal Stefano Domenicali wants to wait a few more events to see if his team now has the genuine form to challenge Red Bull regularly for victory.
"It was an incredible performance," he said. "We were expecting an improvement for sure. But, it was so big to be honest, we need to be cautious, we need to understand the data, and we need to understand what the others are doing.
"We saw that the performance of our car during the weekend was always good in all conditions, wet, soft tyres, hard tyres, even on Saturday was not too bad, so I am pleased for that.
"But as always we need to bring along race-by-race the results, and we [will] try to understand because maybe it will be different for the next grand prix."
Domenicali wants the team to adopt Alonso's philosophy of concentrating one race at a time – and he thinks the outfit has also benefited from not getting distracted by the row over off-throttle blown diffusers.
"We don't have to be focused as a lot of people are doing on this saga of the hot and cold gases, I think all the people are fed up about this," he added.
"We need to look ahead and consider we had a good performance that I hope will be the basis for the next part of the season where we will try to be very strong and try to attack without looking at the classification, and maximise the points, to see where we are going to be in seven races."
Domenicali hopes that the team can bring further upgrades to its car for the German Grand Prix, at which a good performance would go some way to convincing the team that it can look forward to a strong second half to the campaign.
"For sure we will try to put some other updates on the car and then we will see what we have," he said. "That is our objective.
"Our aim is to win some other races and for sure that will be the approach with which we will arrive at the Nurburgring.
"Let's wait and judge after a couple of races, and then we will see if we confirm this kind of situation. Now we are focused on our job.
"But I am sure Red Bull and McLaren will push like hell to understand the performance. It is a never-ending story, and if they are going to be better at the Nurburgring we will see. For sure they will push like hell in order to make sure there are some more upgrades and be strong."
When asked how much he believed the victory at Silverstone was down to car updates, and how much to the blown diffuser regulation tweaks, Domenicali said: "I don't know.
"I think that anyone can say something different, because no one really knows what they are talking about. I hear in this period so many things from one second to three tenths [of a second]. It is like playing with dice. I don't know.
"I want my people to be focused on the development of the car and try to maximise the performance of the car. I said: 'don't follow the discussions, try to be focused on the job'."
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/93034
The Spaniard delivered Ferrari's first win of 2011 in mixed conditions at Silverstone where, after capitalising on Red Bull's mistakes in the pits, he drove away at the head of the pack.
Yet although a raft of updates - including a new rear wing, diffuser and brake ducts - delivered a tangible step forward in pace, team principal Stefano Domenicali wants to wait a few more events to see if his team now has the genuine form to challenge Red Bull regularly for victory.
"It was an incredible performance," he said. "We were expecting an improvement for sure. But, it was so big to be honest, we need to be cautious, we need to understand the data, and we need to understand what the others are doing.
"We saw that the performance of our car during the weekend was always good in all conditions, wet, soft tyres, hard tyres, even on Saturday was not too bad, so I am pleased for that.
"But as always we need to bring along race-by-race the results, and we [will] try to understand because maybe it will be different for the next grand prix."
Domenicali wants the team to adopt Alonso's philosophy of concentrating one race at a time – and he thinks the outfit has also benefited from not getting distracted by the row over off-throttle blown diffusers.
"We don't have to be focused as a lot of people are doing on this saga of the hot and cold gases, I think all the people are fed up about this," he added.
"We need to look ahead and consider we had a good performance that I hope will be the basis for the next part of the season where we will try to be very strong and try to attack without looking at the classification, and maximise the points, to see where we are going to be in seven races."
Domenicali hopes that the team can bring further upgrades to its car for the German Grand Prix, at which a good performance would go some way to convincing the team that it can look forward to a strong second half to the campaign.
"For sure we will try to put some other updates on the car and then we will see what we have," he said. "That is our objective.
"Our aim is to win some other races and for sure that will be the approach with which we will arrive at the Nurburgring.
"Let's wait and judge after a couple of races, and then we will see if we confirm this kind of situation. Now we are focused on our job.
"But I am sure Red Bull and McLaren will push like hell to understand the performance. It is a never-ending story, and if they are going to be better at the Nurburgring we will see. For sure they will push like hell in order to make sure there are some more upgrades and be strong."
When asked how much he believed the victory at Silverstone was down to car updates, and how much to the blown diffuser regulation tweaks, Domenicali said: "I don't know.
"I think that anyone can say something different, because no one really knows what they are talking about. I hear in this period so many things from one second to three tenths [of a second]. It is like playing with dice. I don't know.
"I want my people to be focused on the development of the car and try to maximise the performance of the car. I said: 'don't follow the discussions, try to be focused on the job'."
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/93034