Ferrari all out with new components at private test
Ferrari are in attack mode in an attempt to get back in a fighting position for race wins and the championship. The team have recently completed a 'secret' straight line test where a new F2012 chassis was run by Ferrari's young academy driver Davide Rigon.
Nikolas Tombazis, Ferrari's chief aerodynamicst, confirmed this in Ferrari Racing News: "When you have issues with the correlation between the track and the windtunnel, the best thing to do is verify things on track, which we did during a straightline test that we completed last week. We got some very interersting answers and some very clear trends about what was wrong and we believe we have taken steps to recover that."
Notably, Ferrari introduced several updates during the last 4 races that failed to work, and Tombazis even confirmed they actually had a negative effect on the car's performance. The team has however decided to upgrade its own tunnel as they are now sure it has fallen behind compared to newer wind tunnels of other teams. Until those changes are completed, Ferrari will rent other tunnels, notably the windtunnel of TMG at Cologne where the Toyota F1 team was based.
On the other hand, Italian magazine Autosprint found out new parts will be brought to every single of the 4 races left in this championship, beginning with the Indian GP in 7 days time. Despite worries about getting the parts through the Indian border checks, the team still shipped the components from Maranello as they were not ready in time to be shipped from Korea, along with the rest of the team's equipment and the cars.
The new parts for India, as tested by Rigon on 18 October at Idiada, Spain include a different rear wing, changed brake ducts, new aerofoils under the nose cone, changed sidepod panels and different exhaust exits. All these updates have reportedly been verified at Toyota's windtunnel in Cologne.
