Ferrari welcomed in a new era of Formula One today with the launch of their 2009 challenger, the F60.
Besides marking the start of the Scuderia’s campaign to beat McLaren to the 2009 F1 World Championship, it was also a striking demonstration of the impact that sweeping regulation changes have had on car design. Forumula1.net takes a peek.
Both Ferrari race drivers Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen have spoken of their optimism for 2009 following the launch of the new Ferrari F60 today. Speaking to the official F1 website, Massa talked of how his 2008 experience has made him stronger and how he will fight harder for the upcoming season’s crown.
“If you look at my career from the start to now, every year I feel stronger,” he said. “I think after so much experience over these six years, I feel stronger and I feel more experienced, especially after last year, with how difficult the championship was. I think you learn, and that makes me ready and even more experienced for this year.”
Massa was also moved to talk of his emotional connection with the Italian marque, with whom he starts his fourth season.
“When you race for Ferrari and you debut the car for the first time on the track it’s always quite an important and emotional day,” explained the Brazilian to Ferrari’s official website. “It’s the second time in my career I’ve debuted the car for the first time and I am very proud.
“I was expecting quite a big car, like it was ten years ago for example, but when I got here the car is very small and compact, especially in the rear. It looks good and hopefully will be as quick as it looks like it.”
Raikkonen, in typically blunt fashion, said that the new car’s different looks needed a little getting used to.
“(The car) looks different because of the new regulations, but I think after you look at it for a little while you get used to it. For me it looks different but very good, and I’m looking forward to running in it at the circuit tomorrow to see how it goes.”
The Finn, whose performances were occasionally uncharacteristically mediocre in 2008, promised improvement. He is widely thought to be fighting for his seat for 2010, and said that he was intending to fight for the drivers’ crown again himself.
“Last year was not exactly what I wanted but it’s in the past,” he explained. “Of course there’s a big question mark about who has the best car because the rules have changed a lot. But we are very confident the car should be very good and we should see in the next few weeks how good it is against the others. For sure we’ll try to win both championships.’’
Ferrari were first to usher in a new era of Formula One today with the launch of their 2009 challenger, the F60, in Mugello. Forumula1.net’s Dan Barnes looks back on the highs and lows of 2008 and assesses the Scuderia’s chances of title glory one year on.
The Ferrari F2008 may have had superior pace, but a lack of reliability allied to fudged pit stops and erroneous decisions ultimately cost Ferrari the drivers’ title.
The F2008’s strengths lied in its raw race pace. The Ferrari was estimated to have the most powerful engine on the grid with an advantage over the midfield of around 25 BHP. However, the Ferrari power plant was incredibly unreliable. It failed spectacularly in Australia for both Kimi and Felipe and then later in the season at Hungary and Valencia.
Problems generating heat into their tyres compromised Ferrari in qualifying but it meant that the F2008 had a blistering race pace and looked after its tyres over the course of a race stint tremendously well. Take Hungary. McLaren locked out the front row but Felipe Massa’s race pace was superior to the silver cars allowing the Brazilian to dominate the race until a cruel engine blow three laps from the chequered flag.
Ferrari also seemed to have an advantage at the race start compared to its competitors. That allowed their drivers to challenge early on in a race and gain positions off the grid.
But for all the strengths of the F2008 there were weaknesses too in both the car and the operation of the team at races.
The F2008 had poor engine reliability which cost the team valuable points. There was also the broken exhaust in Magny-Cours which slowed Kimi Raikkonen considerably handing the win to Massa.
A prevalent theme for Ferrari in 2008 was the litany of pit stop errors which marred the teams campaign. The problems were the result of human error from the misuse of the pit stop light system costing Massa the win in Singapore and wrecking havoc with his race in Valencia.
Ferrari also suffered from a more anonymous refuelling problem in Silverstone and Montreal where Massa was misfuelled, severely compromising his qualifying and race respectively. The Ferrari pit wall also made questionable decisions at times during racing situations; most notably in Silverstone where they chose to leave Kimi on his used Intermediates at the first round of pit stops because their forecast showed no more rain. This forecast was wrong and oblivious to all other teams they proceeded to put on a new pair of intermediate tyres which compromised Kimi’s race.
Silverstone highlighted Ferrari’s wet weather ineptitude throughout most of the season, with similarly poor results in the wet races at Monza and Spa. Only by the very end of the season after intensive testing in Mugello did the Scuderia seem to have reasonable wet weather performance as demonstrated in Sao Paulo.
Despite the sweeping rule changes for 2009 not all of the Ferrari’s work in 2008 is defunct. Although engines are now required to last three races and are limited to 18,000 RPM the engines will remain relatively the same with only minor tweaks to improve reliability and costs allowed under the engine freeze.
Ferrari have it seems been exhaustively testing its engines over long runs in pre-season testing having identified it as a key weakness of the 2008 package. Also remedied for the 2009 season is the Ferrari pit light system which now has fail-safes built in to prevent human error of the system whilst in manual mode. The decision making process is also an area the Scuderia should have focused on.
Stefano Domenicali readily identified the weaknesses of Ferrari in 2008 when speaking at the end of season party at Maranello in December: “We didn’t lose the championship in Brazil but before, when we had problems with reliability and made mistakes. We have to analyse the causes, with tranquillity but decisively, to be sure that it will not happen again in the next year.”
If Ferrari can rectify these mistakes they have won half the battle.
The other half of the challenge in 2009 is adapting to the new rules including; slicks, new aero regulations and KERS. KERS has been discussed regularly by Aldo Costa who has sounded anything but confident when discussing KERS, noting in late December “We are late with the KERS. We prepared a hybrid F1 car to test it, but the system isn’t ready. In February we’ll understand how to go to the first grand prix.” In contrast we have heard little about the progress made on slicks or the aero package from Ferrari with the first real indicator of performance likely to come on January 20th when testing commences at Jerez.
So whilst the launch of the Ferrari F2009 at Mugello reveals little about the Scuderia’s competitiveness in 2009 it offers the chance to enjoy the first glimpse at what a completed 2009 car will look like. For anything more than aesthetics I’m afraid we’ll have to wait until Melbourne to find how well Ferrari has adapted to the new rules and if it has ironed out its 2008 gremlins.
Former team boss Eddie Jordan reckons Hamilton will have to watch his back in Brazil, while Massa insists he is focussed only on winning.
Michael Schumacher’s appetite for controversy and carbon-fibre has never really rubbed off on his protégé Felipe Massa. That was until the Japanese Grand Prix in Fuji that is.
Massa’s reckless collision with Lewis Hamilton in the opening laps – for which he was penalised, but let off the hook by virtue of identical punishment for his victim – may not have been intentional, but it certainly planted the seed about the Brazilian’s respect for clean racing.
Such was the success of the move that it may have even been an eye-opener for Massa: it ultimately enabled him to close the gap to Hamilton in a race he had no hope of winning.
Indeed, with a seven point deficit to Hamilton going into Brazil, Massa will be hard pressed to appease his home crowd with the title he and they crave.
Will the Ferrari ace succumb to temptation should he find his Bridgestone rubber in kissing distance of Hamilton’s suspension? Team principal turned pundit Eddie Jordan thinks so; retaliation the Irishman’s prescription.
“People may not like me for saying this, but if Massa tries to take him out as he did in Japan in order to steal the title then Lewis has to be ready for it,” he told the Daily Express.
“If he tries that on then Lewis has to turn his wheel into Massa to ensure he does not finish the race either - he has to take his wheel off.”
“Hamilton needs to be careful. He knows that right now the world is against him - the other drivers are against him and the stewards are against him.
“Yet I think what happened to him after his win at Spa was ghastly and his penalty in the Japanese Grand Prix was harsh too. That’s what he has to contend with.”
To his defence, there is something unconvincing about the picture painted of Massa as an underhanded racer. He says he is intent only on winning the race in front his home crowd.
“Yes it’s true I have a tougher job than Lewis in terms of the points situation, but my own objective for the weekend is much more straightforward than his,” said the Ferrari driver.
“I only have to focus on winning the race on Sunday afternoon, hopefully with my team mate second behind me. The only thing I am thinking about is winning. After that, the matter is not in my hands and we will have to wait and see exactly what and how much we have won.
“For sure, Lewis will try and put pressure on me, but I have zero pressure, because I have nothing to lose.
“I have my people behind me and all the pressure will be on him, especially when you think about what happened at this race last year. I can’t wait for the final Sunday of the season.”
Kimi Raikkonen is Massa’s best asset in Brazil. Should the Finn come second to Massa - a real possibility given Ferrari’s dominance at Interlagos - then that would put pressure on Hamilton to keep a clean nose and bring home the points. And don’t rule out Alonso taking things into his own hands either.
Just how willing Raikkonen is to have a world champion alongside him in the garage next year is another matter.
“It is a team sport and both me and Kimi know we have to do what is best for the team,” upholds Massa. “For sure, psychologically a racing driver always wants to finish in front, always wants to win: it doesn’t matter if you are playing a friend on a computer game or driving a Formula One car.”
“But all drivers have a contract with their team and so you are not racing as an individual.”
“When you are fighting for the championship, with only one driver with a mathematical chance of winning, then all the teams in the pit lane would do the same, which is to put that one driver in a position where he has the best chance of winning. That is part of this sport.”
Singapore and Japanese GP winner Fernando Alonso has backed Felipe Massa in his endeavour to beat Lewis Hamilton to the 2008 F1 World Championship.
Alonso famously fell out with Hamilton’s McLaren outfit after a row over perceived driver favouritism at the height of last year’s spy scandal.
And the Spaniard has made no secret of his desire to see the Woking squad’s chief title rivals Ferrari triumph in this year’s campaign.
“I didn’t know why he (Hamilton) had been penalised,” the Renault driver is quoted as saying by Italy’s Sky after winning last week’s Japanese Grand Prix. After last year, I want Ferrari to win. I will help Massa if I can.”
However Alonso, who has long been touted to join Ferrari if and when Kimi Raikkonen steps down, is unlikely to go out of his way to support Massa having been unimpressed by the Brazilian’s points tally.
“They have thrown away many points,” Alonso is quoted as saying by Diario AS newspaper.
“After 16 races the leader has 84 points, but I had that many after 9 races in 2006,” he adds.
A furious Sébastien Bourdais has hit out at Felipe Massa – accusing the Brazilian of reckless driving and showing a lack of constraint – after the pair collided with each other during the Japanese Grand Prix.
The two drivers ran into each other on lap 51 of the incident-packed race when Bourdais rejoined the Fuji circuit after making his second pit stop, just as Massa turned into the first corner.
The Ferrari driver went around the outside of Bourdais leaving him little room to manoeuvre, and the pair made contact with Massa spinning off the track as a consequence.
The incident was investigated after the race and Bourdais was dealt a 25-second penalty which dropped him out of his points-paying sixth place to tenth, promoting Massa to seventh.
Massa maintains that he had already taken the corner when Bourdais hit him, but the Frenchman starkly disagreed.
“I did everything I could not to run into him,” the Toro Rosso vented to Reuters. “He just squeezed and turned and behaved like I didn’t exist, like I wasn’t there. What am I supposed to do? I was coming out of the pits, he turned in, I was on the kerb and there was nowhere else I could go. I was racing him for position.
“For me it’s very clear – yes, I exit the pits, yes I’m supposed to be careful and I was. I stayed inside and I didn’t push him out; I didn’t overshoot the corner.
“I’ve been in this position many, many times and I never had any incidents. It’s just a little bit of respect. You give each other room and then everything goes right but if you don’t, there’s going to be an incident.”
Bourdais, who has won a record-braking four world championships in the American champ cars series, went on to lecture Massa on the importance of showing constraint when battling in the heat of a championship fight.
“Fighting for the championship you just don’t take unnecessary risks like this,” he said. “You’ve got everything to lose and nothing to gain. He was going to pit in three laps, I was ahead of him and he was going to finish behind us anyway. Why would you even think about doing something like that? I don’t understand.”
“It ruins the weekend, takes away three points for the team and gives Felipe another point – I am really happy for him, obviously. It was a good showing today for me, running consistently in the top five with only one mistake in what was a tough race.”
“I don’t know what I was supposed to do basically. I could have unrolled the red carpet and given him the corner. That is the only thing I could have done.”
