Ferrari targeting China upgrade

[goferrarigo]

Ferrari is planning to take immediate action after another disappointing race weekend at the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso finished the race fifth and sixth, although Alonso had looked capable of a podium until he ran into the back of Lewis Hamilton's McLaren with 10 laps to go. Ferrari had been hoping the hotter weather at Sepang would help its plight after problems with tyre temperature in Australia, but it was still a second off the pace in qualifying.

There were no major updates to the car, with the team instead trying to understand its problems before enacting a development plan to get closer to the promise it showed in winter testing. With over 100 laps of data gathered on Friday plus the race itself, team boss Stefano Domenicali is hoping a quick turnaround of new parts will see boost to performance in China.

"Felipe and Fernando both drove great races: it's up to us to give them a better car," he said. "We find ourselves in a situation where we need to be perfect to maximise our potential, given that we are lagging behind in terms of performance: we did not manage that and we must do all in our power to avoid that situation repeating itself.

"At the same time, we have to seriously ramp up the development of our car to make up the lost ground compared to the best. We will try and complete an analysis of the aerodynamics of the car as quickly as possible and introduce some developments as soon as we can, maybe right from the next race in China."

Technical director Aldo Costa said: "We are working on different areas. There will be something new in China, and something more significant in Turkey and for the rest of the season. Will it be enough? I don't know the answer to that now. Clearly we have to push harder than the others because we have to make up the ground we have lost."

Costa said the lack of performance had not gone down well back at base but had worked as an incentive to work harder.

"At Maranello, we have a lot of talented people and they are very peed off with this situation and I know that everyone is very keen to fight back."

Looking back at Sunday's race, Domenicali added that both drivers missed out on a podium in Malaysia due to unfortunate incidents; in Alonso's case the failure of his DRS while trying to pass Hamilton and in Massa's case a problem with the front-left tyre at his first pit stop.

"We cannot be pleased with this result, because today, we had the possibility to finally leap up onto the podium," Domenicali said. "Two incidents, linked one to a reliability issue and one at a pit stop cost us very dear. It's a shame, because in terms of race pace the 150º Italia seemed much more competitive when compared to its qualifying performance, as we had already seen in Melbourne. Once again today one driver, Vettel, was probably uncatchable but we were capable of fighting with all the others."

[scuderiafan]

[brava]

I am not sure what sort of upgrade we can have in 5 days, but I do hope that they are going to work for us.

[F2002]

Anyone who has a better understanding than me can please clarify: if the problem is lack of downforce, but the car is kinder on its tyres, would increasing the downforce to solve one problem lead to higher tyre degradation, and therefore create a problem elsewhere ?

[Kingdom Hearts]

If this it's a rushed upgrade, I don't think it's a good idea.

[Hornet]

I am not sure what sort of upgrade we can have in 5 days, but I do hope that they are going to work for us.

Sounds like just minor upgrade, with the significant upgrade coming in Turkey

[scuderiafan]

Anyone who has a better understanding than me can please clarify: if the problem is lack of downforce, but the car is kinder on its tyres, would increasing the downforce to solve one problem lead to higher tyre degradation, and therefore create a problem elsewhere ?

surely more downforce would make the car take even more care of its tyres.

[Ste]

So is everyone...

McLaren pushing for China upgrades
Monday, April 11th 2011
By Jonathan Noble
Source: Autosport

McLaren will push to get a new floor and exhaust layout race ready for this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix in a bid to close the gap on pacesetter Red Bull Racing.

Lewis Hamilton tried out the new parts during Friday practice in Malaysia last week, but the team decided to stick with its earlier evolution for the rest of the event because it did not want to risk reliability problems.

However, McLaren will give the new parts another test in practice at Shanghai - and team boss Martin Whitmarsh is confident that his squad has what it takes to hunt down Red Bull Racing.

"We've got some things that we will try on Friday and that is the nature of this sport," explained Whitmarsh. "I think we are quite close, but I would like to be closer or ahead.

"It is my job to keep pushing and improving the car, which we will try and do. We have some interesting work to do on the Friday in China, but not much time. We will do the best we can there.

"If you look at the progress we have made in the last four or five weeks we are heading in the right direction, but we will need to keep going if we are going to be competitive, win races and compete for the championship this year."

When asked to explain why, if the new floor and exhausts were faster, they were not used in Malaysia, Whitmarsh said: "Some elements of it were, but you have to concentrate on winning the race.

"When you are trying to develop a car there is always a conflict between that, and we thought we had a fairly respectable package that had at least one race distance on, and we thought we would back off to that. We will do some more work on that floor undoubtedly in China and we will make some more progress."

Whitmarsh thinks McLaren can be pretty happy with its performance in Malaysia - having challenged for pole position and not been too far adrift of grand prix-winner Sebastian Vettel in the race.

"You have to say, look at what we did in qualifying. I think we were quite close. In race pace, accepting Lewis had that problem at the end, in the second stint Lewis made headway on Sebastian and in the last stint Jenson [Button] made headway on Sebastian.

"If you look at qualifying then we had the ability to be on pole here and we had the ability to chase them.

"For Lewis it was a disappointing afternoon, with what happened at the start, to get behind Nick [Heidfeld]. Nick did a great start to attack from behind, getting around the outside of the first corner, so [Hamilton] lost the time. He had a good second stint, the third stint was also respectable but the fourth stint was difficult, possibly because he was on used prime tyres."

[NJB13]

surely more downforce would make the car take even more care of its tyres.

Correct

[NJB13]

I think Ferrari's "in-season" development is the best around. Our performance last year in developing the F10 was definitely (IMO) by far and away the best. Yes, we had a couple of bad implementations of upgrades, but overall, they worked very well. I think a lot of that has to do with the amount of baseline data we prepare and collect.

[Forzi]

Yesterday we were not too far from RBR and almost in the same class as McLaren (talking about the race pace), and still, we have so much to get on our car. I think when we get our car evolved to the same level as our rivals, we gonna be blinding fast

[F2002]

@scuderiafan
Thanks for clarifying, but why exactly is that ?

[scuderiafan]

dunno exactly, but i heard martin brundle say that.

[Ste]

@scuderiafan
Thanks for clarifying, but why exactly is that ?

Because more downforce means the car is more stuck to the ground, and therefore sliding less. If the tyres are sliding over the surface, they will degrade more, whereas if they're stuck to the ground they generate traction without slipping, therefore staying fresher.

In the same way as if you wheel spun your car away from the traffic lights every time, your front tyres would last far less time than they would if you pulled away normally.

[LAROSA SpA]

Because more downforce means the car is more stuck to the ground, and therefore sliding less. If the tyres are sliding over the surface, they will degrade more, whereas if they're stuck to the ground they generate traction without slipping, therefore staying fresher.

In the same way as if you wheel spun your car away from the traffic lights every time, your front tyres would last far less time than they would if you pulled away normally.

Exactly if you can 'push' the tire into the ground the tire will have less 'slip' & wear out less.
(in simple terms).

[Hornet]

Bringing new parts is one thing. Most important is how those parts will improve the performance.

Of course I hope our parts will truly improve the performance and handling of the car. And McLaren's part makes them "dehamilnate" the tires faster

[F2002]

Because more downforce means the car is more stuck to the ground, and therefore sliding less. If the tyres are sliding over the surface, they will degrade more, whereas if they're stuck to the ground they generate traction without slipping, therefore staying fresher.

In the same way as if you wheel spun your car away from the traffic lights every time, your front tyres would last far less time than they would if you pulled away normally.

Makes sense, thanks.