Tag Archives: Ferrari

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff acknowledges that Ferrari is catching Mercedes after Sebastian Vettel kept in touch with the pacesetters in Brazil.

The German finished just 14secs behind winner Nico Rosberg, and 6secs behind Lewis Hamilton. It was his 13^th visit to the podium in 2015.

“I am anticipating a robust challenge from Ferrari because they have done some clever moves,” said Wolff. “And they have definitely caught up. You can see that even towards the end of the race today Sebastian was not very far away, when Lewis and Nico were pushing flat out biggest gap was seven seconds. That is not a clear-cut dominant race win. I think we will have a situation where Ferrari will be a very important competitor.

After a relatively low-key race in Brazil Wolff was asked if the sport needed a further step from Ferrari to improve next year’s show he said: “I think we are not relying on it. We wouldn’t want to rely on it! What you can see again with aerodynamic efficient cars, it is very difficult to follow. You destroy your tyres and when you destroy your tyres by attacking and being close for a couple of laps you have no performance left in the tyres. It is nothing new.

“We have seen this the last decades, always the same. And in the race the top guys were running away at the front, there wasn’t any rain and not a lot of incidents in the race. It is like a good and a bad football match, and today we have probably seen one of the boring football matches.”

Ferrari technical director James Allison says it’s too early to judge Ferrari’s true form in Malaysia following a promising first day for the team in Sepang.

Kimi Raikkonen was second fastest in FP2 and some 0.373s off Lewis Hamilton, although admittedly the Briton did not have an easy day. The red car looked particularly good on the medium option tyre, although Sebastian Vettel didn’t get a clean run on it and was thus down in seventh.

“I don’t know, we’ll find out on Sunday!,” Allison said when asked about prospects for the race. “But we do look as if our tyre deg is quite good, and we do look as if our pace is reasonably good. But everyone uses the Fridays differently, so you never know what the others were doing. But we feel it’s been a good day.”

Regarding Raikkonen’s pace he said: “The car’s going well, he’s going well, and so is Sebastian, to be honest. If you look at where Sebastian was in FP2, his best time was set on the prime tyre, and Kimi’s on the option, albeit a scrubbed option. So I think both of them are going well and I expect Kimi will have a good race on Sunday, as should Sebastian, based on the pace we saw today.

Asked by this writer about closing the gap to Mercedes he said: “It would be nice if they could feel us breathing down their collars, or even in the course of time get ourselves in front of them. I think the delta we saw in Melbourne probably was a little unkind to us. I think we probably should have been a little bit ahead of the Williams in qualifying, and then driven up the road 15 or 20 seconds more than we did. It would be nice to have a clean qualifying here and see what we can do.”

Meanwhile Allison made some interesting observations about the improvements seen in this year’s Ferrari package.

“In pure lap times the gains are almost equal, chassis and power unit wise. I guess on the chassis as normal the lion’s share of the gains are aerodynamic, because that’s the thing that has the most authority to put lap time on the car. So on the chassis side its 80/20 aero versus some quite useful gains that have been made in the cooling efficiency of the car, which then translate into aero by allowing you to run the car tighter at the back.”

Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene insisted today that the Italian outfit is keeping its expectations in check despite the strong form shown by the SF15-T thus far in testing.

The car has consistently been at or close to the top of the times in the six days held thus far, and Kimi Raikkonen has stressed that it is a big improvement over its predecessor.

“My job is to rebuild the team, to create a calm environment and to ensure that the great determination I have seen in every member of the team is rewarded with results,” said Arrivabene.

“I have never believed in such a thing as a winter championship. We have our feet on the ground and as I said already in December, winning two races could be considered a success, three would be perfect and if we win four, I will run barefoot on the hills of Maranello. We have two fantastic drivers and they are also great friends and that can only benefit the whole team.”

Arrivabene said it was all about teamwork: “I wish to underline yet again that the most important thing is for us all to pull together, with common goals and with the determination I saw in the eyes of those who were even at work on 24 and 31 December, in the mechanical or composites departments, to the backdrop of the sound of the engines rather than ‘Jingle Bells.’

“I have seen that there are exceptional people in Maranello and each one of them is making a contribution. However, it’s clear the car does not belong to any one person, it belongs to Ferrari and its people.”

Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene has reiterated that he has targeted at least two GP wins for the team this season.

Arrivabene, who made a similar statement last month, shied away from a more ambitious target.

“I’m just realistic,” he said. “Nobody has the magic to change things when things are unchangeable. We applied certain modifications that in our opinion are quite interesting. With that I don’t want to say that we are going to win the World Championship, but for sure we are committed at least to win two races.”

Regarding the SF15-T he said: “Enzo Ferrari said a long time ago the best car is a winning car. Last year we had an ugly car and it was a non-winning car on top of this. I like the car of this year in terms of aesthetics. I don’t know about the performance, but it’s really sexy.”

He says the personnel changes do not mean a change of philosophy at the Italian team.

“It doesn’t impact the philosophy of Ferrari. The philosophy of Ferrari was dictated by the founder, Enzo Ferrari. The work we have to do is to enhance the team spirit, and the passion, that was a little bit lost in the past few years, and to look forward, to work together very hard, with one objective – to win as much as possible.”

On the subject of the drivers, he added: “They have to work together as team mates, they have to work with the team. Things I want to avoid, talking about the overall team and not only about the driver, is that everybody is pushing and working together in the same direction. I’m expecting the drivers to do the same.”