Ferrari with suboptimal strategy again [Archive]

ioan

29th March 2009, 08:18

dj_bytedisaster

29th March 2009, 08:44

And don't forget Massa making a complete monkey's breakfast of the restart - the prancing horse is starting to limp...

Daniel

29th March 2009, 08:46

And now Ferrari are in a good position because of the sc

ioan

29th March 2009, 09:20

And now Ferrari are in a good position because of the sc

Really?!
With such a short middle stint :?:

Every fan and his dog was tipping on Hard / Hard / Soft, they went with Soft / Hard / Hard!

Not that it matters after Raikkonen put it into the wall and Massa had a hydraulic problem. But still the Ferrari strategist is the worst out there.

ShiftingGears

29th March 2009, 09:36

What happened with Raikkonen?

Channel Ten still loves the poorly timed ad breaks...

ioan

29th March 2009, 09:39

What happened with Raikkonen?

Channel Ten still loves the poorly timed ad breaks...

Lost control and touched a wall.

jjanicke

29th March 2009, 09:52

Really?!
With such a short middle stint :?:

Every fan and his dog was tipping on Hard / Hard / Soft, they went with Soft / Hard / Hard!

Not that it matters after Raikkonen put it into the wall and Massa had a hydraulic problem. But still the Ferrari strategist is the worst out there.

Really??

That strategy (h/h/s) didn't work out for Roseberg to well. Genius?!

Garry Walker

29th March 2009, 09:57

Well, Kubica tried the same strategy as Ferraris and he would have been able to challenge for a win, had the idiot not taken him out.
But Ferrari messed up giving Massa such a short 2nd stint.

F1boat

29th March 2009, 09:59

The strategy was horrendous. Horrible. Awful. They should have kept Ross, no matter the price.

jjanicke

29th March 2009, 10:31

Well, Kubica tried the same strategy as Ferraris and he would have been able to challenge for a win, had the idiot not taken him out.
But Ferrari messed up giving Massa such a short 2nd stint.

He had a lock on 2nd for sure. Challenge for a win is stretching it a ton. Jenson was the class of the field. Held the margin he needed to.

Garry Walker

29th March 2009, 10:38

He had a lock on 2nd for sure. Challenge for a win is stretching it a ton. Jenson was the class of the field. Held the margin he needed to.

Button had softs at the end and they were losing grip quickly. I dont think Kubica would have gotten him, but it sure would have been close.

Dave B

29th March 2009, 10:46

Kubica was gaining at less than 0.3 per lap with 5 laps to go and a ~4.7s gap; there was no way he could have won unless he pressured Button into a mistake.

ioan

29th March 2009, 10:52

Well, Kubica tried the same strategy as Ferraris and he would have been able to challenge for a win, ...offensive language blanked out....
But Ferrari messed up giving Massa such a short 2nd stint.

Agree on the strategy part. It was really an obvious thing to do. Use the harder tires on longer stints while track was still at a higher temperature and than use the soft tires for a shorter stint when the temperatures start falling at the end of the race.
I think I'll send my CV for the race strategist position at Ferrari, even without taking all the data into account I can hardly do worse than they did today. :D ;)

janneppi

29th March 2009, 11:02

To be fair on Ferrari, everybody suffered with the softer tyres, in a space of few laps Ferraris and Kubica all lost their speed, the same way some lost in the end of the race.
Still, Massa's second stint was oddly short, he lost 12 seconds to kimi, and Ferrari knew he would loose time and pretty much apologised it on the radio.

V12

29th March 2009, 11:08

Suboptimal strategy? If the Ferraris and Kubica hadn't shot themselves in the foot Jenson could have wound up fourth. Yeah they were lucky with the first safety car putting them in that position but I think the possibility of that made them make that call (let's face it we have safety cars pretty much every other year at Melbourne)

DexDexter

29th March 2009, 11:08

Valve Bounce

29th March 2009, 11:09

How the heck were they thinking to run 17 laps with the soft tires? Those tires were shot after the first 8 laps.

This is starting to be a habit now. It's like if they forget during the winter how to decide a good strategy.

They were waiting for an e-mail from Ross Brawn, no doubt!! :p :

BDunnell

29th March 2009, 13:25

To be fair on Ferrari, everybody suffered with the softer tyres, in a space of few laps Ferraris and Kubica all lost their speed, the same way some lost in the end of the race.

That's my assessment, too. Again, I feel Ferrari are being criticised too much here.

ioan

29th March 2009, 13:30

That's my assessment, too. Again, I feel Ferrari are being criticised too much here.

Putting Massa on a very short 2nd stint on hard tires was more than amateurish and I'm looking forward to see how they will cover their backsides over this move.

There was a chance to be on the podium for Ferrari and they blew it royally.

BDunnell

29th March 2009, 13:33

Putting Massa on a very short 2nd stint on hard tires was more than amateurish and I'm looking forward to see how they will cover their backsides over this move.

There was a chance to be on the podium for Ferrari and they blew it royally.

I must confess I have forgotten whether he was in the middle of that short second stint at the time he was in third (if I remember correctly — it's been a long day already!) and looking good as a potential challenger to Button.

ioan

29th March 2009, 13:41

I must confess I have forgotten whether he was in the middle of that short second stint at the time he was in third (if I remember correctly — it's been a long day already!) and looking good as a potential challenger to Button.

Ferrari never looked like challenging Button, but 3rd was in their pocket based on pace but how was poor Massa going to hold position when he had the heaviest car in the whole field after the 2nd stop and the others were running on almost empty tanks?!

This piece of strategy was as bad as last season in Monaco, the dumbest move out off all the possible ones.

christophulus

29th March 2009, 14:46

Q. Could you explain to us the strategy about using the softer tyres at the beginning when it was hotter?

KR: Well, because we have difficulties with the hard tyres to get them working. In that kind of case, we need to wait and wait and not push - so it was going to be difficult. When we go out from the pit lane with the new tyres it is going to be okay, but for us for sure it was a better choice to take the soft tyre.
Q&A with Raikkonen (http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/74070)

Q. What can you tell us about the pace of the car in relation to the rest of the grid?

FM: It was not so easy on the race. On the soft tyres we were struggling, on the hard tyre we were struggling a lot to get the tyres working. If you take the whole race, we had the Brawn which was in another planet, then we had the Red Bull - Vettel was quite strong, quite a good pace, maybe a bit better than us. Then we had Kubica who was also competitive. I think we are in the middle of these teams.
Massa (http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/74074)

ioan

29th March 2009, 17:26

Looks like this time they also messed up their set-up not only the strategy.

So while knowing that their set-up is not even close to perfect they chose a kamikaze strategy for the best placed driver. Even a beginner would have tried to get some points out of such a situation instead of risking such a stupid move while having the luck to have their cars running 3rd and 5th after the first round of pitstops.

F1boat

29th March 2009, 17:29

In my opinion that's what Ferrari is missing these days - they can't get the setup right and the strategy is bad.

markabilly

29th March 2009, 17:35

Well, they could always hire Todt and Brawn back..........

Two years ago, I wondered how long it would take before the impetus ran out, and ferrari ended up a back marker....

superocean

29th March 2009, 22:55

Is Ferrari trying to copy the Honda/toyota style of management? Someone at ferrari is seriously not earning their pay and their series of unfortunate errors the past 3 years has got to stop.

aryan

30th March 2009, 00:41

Ferrari has been pretty weak on the strategy front for 2 seasons now. Last year they made so many mistakes in Istanbul, Valencia, Monaco, etc. Without them they should have had both championships in the bag.

They needed Brawn, and he is proving that to them now.

wedge

30th March 2009, 01:23

Ferrari never looked like challenging Button, but 3rd was in their pocket based on pace but how was poor Massa going to hold position when he had the heaviest car in the whole field after the 2nd stop and the others were running on almost empty tanks?!

This piece of strategy was as bad as last season in Monaco, the dumbest move out off all the possible ones.

I think they were expecting the usual SC-fest at Melbourne but it didn't turn out like it did. Looks like Hamilton, Trulli, and the Ferraris went from 3 stop to 2 stop.

http://www.formula1.com/results/season/2009/805/6603/pit_stop_summary.html

ioan

30th March 2009, 11:26

I think they were expecting the usual SC-fest at Melbourne but it didn't turn out like it did. Looks like Hamilton, Trulli, and the Ferraris went from 3 stop to 2 stop.

http://www.formula1.com/results/season/2009/805/6603/pit_stop_summary.html

According to Massa they were initially on a 2 stop strategy, than at the first pit stop they decided to go for 3 stops on his car, and were caught out by the SC.
Even so he was running just behind Lewis and he could have got 4th if it wasn't for yet another technical problem.

IMO the 3 stops strategy was a very poor move with such a tight field.

ArrowsFA1

30th March 2009, 12:14

There was a chance to be on the podium for Ferrari and they blew it royally.
Stefano Domenicali, as always, was pretty open with his assessment:

"Reliability was one big issue, but I have to be fair and honest - the results of today's race were decided by a lack of performance. With Felipe, retrospectively, we were wrong with the strategy – it was maybe too aggressive and that was pretty clear. With Kimi it was okay in terms of strategy. So we have to put all the things in the proper list of priority."
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/74089

DexDexter

30th March 2009, 12:56

Slightly off topic but Finnish sources are reporting that Kimi's car may have had a differential problem which actually caused him to spin.

ioan

30th March 2009, 16:32

Slightly off topic but Finnish sources are reporting that Kimi's car may have had a differential problem which actually caused him to spin.

Saw this being reported, but he went on to post his best lap of the race after that spin. I have my doubts that a broken differential allows you to have better lap times than a working differential.

Anyway I'm waiting to see if Ferrari will tell us what broke on Kimi's and Felipe's cars.

555-04Q2

30th March 2009, 16:38

How the heck were they thinking to run 17 laps with the soft tires? Those tires were shot after the first 8 laps.

This is starting to be a habit now. It's like if they forget during the winter how to decide a good strategy.

Ever since MS, RB, JT and a few others left the team, the prancing horse has become a stumbling donkey :( Sad but true.