Frerrari and the wind of change

Stefano Domenicali (ITA) Ferrari General Director. Formula One World Championship, Rd 1, Australian Grand Prix, Practice Day, Albert Park, Melbourne, Australia, Friday, 27 March 2009 Felipe Massa (BRA) Ferrari F2009. Formula One World Championship, Rd 2, Malaysian Grand Prix, Practice Day, Sepang, Malaysia, Friday, 3 April 2009 Mechanics tend to the Ferrari F2009 of Kimi Raikkonen (FIN) Ferrari stops after a possible KERS related problem. Formula One World Championship, Rd 2, Malaysian Grand Prix, Practice Day, Sepang, Malaysia, Friday, 3 April 2009

Ferrari’s Stefano Domenicali has admitted that his team are going to have to dig deep to recover from their worst start to a world championship campaign in over 15 years. They left the opening round in Australia without a point and another disastrous weekend in Malaysia yielded similarly poor results.

Friday at Sepang saw Kimi Raikkonen plagued by KERS problems, while on Saturday it was team mate Felipe Massa who took the hit, failing to progress beyond Q1 after the team mistakenly assumed his time would be quick enough to progress into the second qualifying phase.

On Sunday, both drivers suffered their fair share of misfortune. Raikkonen went plummeting down the order after a premature switch to wet tyres and was subsequently sidelined with further KERS issues, while Massa repeatedly found himself on the wrong rubber at the wrong time and was eventually classified ninth.

"With hindsight, it's clear that we took some wrong decisions,” said team principal Domenicali, “especially in Kimi's case at his first pit stop: the information we had at the time was that the storm was due to hit in a very short time, when in fact it took a few more minutes for the rain to come.”

Whereas in recent seasons Ferrari have been able to rely on the intrinsic pace of their car to carry them through difficult situations, Domenicali conceded that this is currently not the case, with the F60 seemingly unable to match the speed of traditionally slower rivals.

“We have to change our mentality and accept that we are in a different situation to the past and that therefore we have to tackle it with a different approach, both on track and in Maranello," he added. “Clearly we have to extricate ourselves from this situation, without panicking, but with every one of us taking on our responsibilities: we have to dig deep and react, starting immediately.”

The last time Ferrari failed to score in the opening two races was 1992. They opened their account at round three with fourth and fifth places for Jean Alesi and Ivan Capelli, and went on to finish fourth in that year’s constructors’ championship.

From www.formula1.com