Ferrari hasn't had 'defacto' #1/#2 roles since Schumacher. They've just treated the situation fairly and only ever resorted to team orders based on the situation. Nobody was ever getting blatant favoritism from the start.TeamKoolGreen wrote: ↑26 Apr 2024, 22:36Does anyone else think Vettel was not a #1 driver at Ferrari ? He was a 4x champ star signing.
No, Alonso gained favored status only when he became the clear best chance for the team in a given situation or by the second half of the season when was far enough ahead to have earned it. He was not given such status by default at the start of a season which is what a true #1 status actually means. Massa and Kimi had every opportunity to fight for such a spot in a given season and simply weren't good enough.
Newey's contribution to Ferrari's success would no doubt be there if he joined and I would love to see him in the team, but you're exaggerating. Ferrari does not desperately need him. They've shown that they are capable of building a race-winning car especially after a big regulation change like in 2017 or 2022. Their biggest disadvantage in 2017 was the PU and in 2022 the F1-75 was the best car out of the box - fast on all types of tracks and in all conditions, completely stable despite porpoising (in fact the only stable car under porpoising). It only lacked race pace, but without TD039 it would have only been a matter of time to improve it. The TD put them behind massively, however they've still managed to come back strong. Just look at this year's car.Xyz22 wrote: ↑26 Apr 2024, 23:54I've seen people arguing that getting Wachè or Balbo would be better than Newey.
This is completely wrong. There is no one that is even remotely close to Adrian Newey in Formula 1 in taking the key project decisions, especially when there is a massive regulations change. Newey would be the perfect addition to Ferrari technical team as he would be the overall Technical Supervisor of the entire project, meaning he would set the base concept/idea of the car (i.e. downwash concept for the 22 regs, overall suspension layout, etc.). This is where Ferrari have been lacking a lot in the last few years. Getting the key decision wrong at the project's outset can have serious consequence. It doesn't really matter how good the technical team is (all the engineers, etc.), the car won't be competitive.
Vettel was not the #1 driver. It’s a gripe we Tifosi have had for a while now. Ferrari doesn’t believe in “#1-#2” statuses for a while now.TeamKoolGreen wrote: ↑26 Apr 2024, 22:36Does anyone else think Vettel was not a #1 driver at Ferrari ? He was a 4x champ star signing.
https://theweek.com/formula-1/100739/f1 ... bull-chinaSpeaking at the Chinese Grand Prix Ferrari team principal Binotto said: “As I said at the start of the season, if there is any 50-50 situation where we need to take a decision, then the advantage would be given to Sebastian simply because Sebastian has got most of the experience with the team in F1.
“He won four championships and, certainly for us, he’s the driver who has the most probability to challenge for the title. We agreed with both drivers.”
Regarding the F1 75 i don't agree they would have fixed the tyre wear. The F1 75 had simply way more peak downforce than the RB18b at the start of the season (remember that Ferrari spent the entire budget on the 2022 car and started earlier than RB which had less wind tunnel hours, less money and less time due to the fact that they developed the RB16b for many months). This is why the car was also competitive in race trim at the beginning, as Leclerc was able to manage the pace and still be either quicker or on par with the RB. The TD 039 and the changes for 2023 completely destroyed the concept of that car, and yet again Ferrari took the wrong decision during the 2022 season. They should have understood that the best option was to switch to the downwash concept in order to start understanding it but they didn't, which perfectly highlights the weakness of the Team.LM10 wrote: ↑27 Apr 2024, 00:36Newey's contribution to Ferrari's success would no doubt be there if he joined and I would love to see him in the team, but you're exaggerating. Ferrari does not desperately need him. They've shown that they are capable of building a race-winning car especially after a big regulation change like in 2017 or 2022. Their biggest disadvantage in 2017 was the PU and in 2022 the F1-75 was the best car out of the box - fast on all types of tracks and in all conditions, completely stable despite porpoising (in fact the only stable car under porpoising). It only lacked race pace, but without TD039 it would have only been a matter of time to improve it. The TD put them behind massively, however they've still managed to come back strong. Just look at this year's car.Xyz22 wrote: ↑26 Apr 2024, 23:54I've seen people arguing that getting Wachè or Balbo would be better than Newey.
This is completely wrong. There is no one that is even remotely close to Adrian Newey in Formula 1 in taking the key project decisions, especially when there is a massive regulations change. Newey would be the perfect addition to Ferrari technical team as he would be the overall Technical Supervisor of the entire project, meaning he would set the base concept/idea of the car (i.e. downwash concept for the 22 regs, overall suspension layout, etc.). This is where Ferrari have been lacking a lot in the last few years. Getting the key decision wrong at the project's outset can have serious consequence. It doesn't really matter how good the technical team is (all the engineers, etc.), the car won't be competitive.
Vettel was the higher stature driver at Ferrari. Whether Ferrari has official #1's or 2's isn't even relevant.codetower wrote: ↑27 Apr 2024, 00:38Vettel was not the #1 driver. It’s a gripe we Tifosi have had for a while now. Ferrari doesn’t believe in “#1-#2” statuses for a while now.TeamKoolGreen wrote: ↑26 Apr 2024, 22:36Does anyone else think Vettel was not a #1 driver at Ferrari ? He was a 4x champ star signing.
Must be why LEC stuffed him in Monza and the team kicked LEC out of the team and why LEC now drives for Re… wait that’s not how it went, is it?AR3-GP wrote:https://theweek.com/formula-1/100739/f1 ... bull-chinaSpeaking at the Chinese Grand Prix Ferrari team principal Binotto said: “As I said at the start of the season, if there is any 50-50 situation where we need to take a decision, then the advantage would be given to Sebastian simply because Sebastian has got most of the experience with the team in F1.
“He won four championships and, certainly for us, he’s the driver who has the most probability to challenge for the title. We agreed with both drivers.”
Next topic.
F1-75’s relative lack of race pace was never up to it not having a downwashing concept and it also never was up to having high peak downforce (which surely does not equal to high tyre wear).Xyz22 wrote: ↑27 Apr 2024, 00:45Regarding the F1 75 i don't agree they would have fixed the tyre wear. The F1 75 had simply way more peak downforce than the RB18b at the start of the season (remember that Ferrari spent the entire budget on the 2022 car and started earlier than RB which had less wind tunnel hours, less money and less time due to the fact that they developed the RB16b for many months). This is why the car was also competitive in race trim at the beginning, as Leclerc was able to manage the pace and still be either quicker or on par with the RB. The TD 039 and the changes for 2023 completely destroyed the concept of that car, and yet again Ferrari took the wrong decision during the 2022 season. They should have understood that the best option was to switch to the downwash concept in order to start understanding it but they didn't, which perfectly highlights the weakness of the Team.LM10 wrote: ↑27 Apr 2024, 00:36Newey's contribution to Ferrari's success would no doubt be there if he joined and I would love to see him in the team, but you're exaggerating. Ferrari does not desperately need him. They've shown that they are capable of building a race-winning car especially after a big regulation change like in 2017 or 2022. Their biggest disadvantage in 2017 was the PU and in 2022 the F1-75 was the best car out of the box - fast on all types of tracks and in all conditions, completely stable despite porpoising (in fact the only stable car under porpoising). It only lacked race pace, but without TD039 it would have only been a matter of time to improve it. The TD put them behind massively, however they've still managed to come back strong. Just look at this year's car.Xyz22 wrote: ↑26 Apr 2024, 23:54I've seen people arguing that getting Wachè or Balbo would be better than Newey.
This is completely wrong. There is no one that is even remotely close to Adrian Newey in Formula 1 in taking the key project decisions, especially when there is a massive regulations change. Newey would be the perfect addition to Ferrari technical team as he would be the overall Technical Supervisor of the entire project, meaning he would set the base concept/idea of the car (i.e. downwash concept for the 22 regs, overall suspension layout, etc.). This is where Ferrari have been lacking a lot in the last few years. Getting the key decision wrong at the project's outset can have serious consequence. It doesn't really matter how good the technical team is (all the engineers, etc.), the car won't be competitive.
Fixing high tyre wear is also extremely complicated. Not even Mercedes in 2013 was able to do it despite illegal tests with Pirelli. Yes they were very competitive in some tracks but nowhere in others. In 2023 Ferrari improved the situation by really managing the pace in key parts of the race, with upgrades aimed at making the car more stable, etc. but they never fixed the issue entirely. Only with a completely new chassis they changed the behaviour of the car.
I'm not saying that Ferrari project leaders are not good. I'm saying that Newey would improve the Team massively, especially in that particular area. It would also reduce the pressure on Cardile and the others, which could end up in them performing even better during the design/development stage.
I've never said that. The F1 75 concept was great before TD 039 and the 2023 changes. What i said is that the Team failed to understand that the F1 75 concept would have not worked with these new changes. They made a conservative decision of sticking with just an evolution of the F1 75 which ended up losing 1.5 years of development compared to Red Bull as everyone now switched to the downwash concept. As you can see, the wrong decision of not switching to the downwash concept for the 2023 season (during 2022) impacted negatively the SF 23 and to an extent the SF 24 as well because Ferrari have way less know how compared to AMR, RB and even McL.LM10 wrote: ↑27 Apr 2024, 01:23F1-75’s relative lack of race pace was never up to it not having a downwashing concept and it also never was up to having high peak downforce (which surely does not equal to high tyre wear).Xyz22 wrote: ↑27 Apr 2024, 00:45Regarding the F1 75 i don't agree they would have fixed the tyre wear. The F1 75 had simply way more peak downforce than the RB18b at the start of the season (remember that Ferrari spent the entire budget on the 2022 car and started earlier than RB which had less wind tunnel hours, less money and less time due to the fact that they developed the RB16b for many months). This is why the car was also competitive in race trim at the beginning, as Leclerc was able to manage the pace and still be either quicker or on par with the RB. The TD 039 and the changes for 2023 completely destroyed the concept of that car, and yet again Ferrari took the wrong decision during the 2022 season. They should have understood that the best option was to switch to the downwash concept in order to start understanding it but they didn't, which perfectly highlights the weakness of the Team.LM10 wrote: ↑27 Apr 2024, 00:36
Newey's contribution to Ferrari's success would no doubt be there if he joined and I would love to see him in the team, but you're exaggerating. Ferrari does not desperately need him. They've shown that they are capable of building a race-winning car especially after a big regulation change like in 2017 or 2022. Their biggest disadvantage in 2017 was the PU and in 2022 the F1-75 was the best car out of the box - fast on all types of tracks and in all conditions, completely stable despite porpoising (in fact the only stable car under porpoising). It only lacked race pace, but without TD039 it would have only been a matter of time to improve it. The TD put them behind massively, however they've still managed to come back strong. Just look at this year's car.
Fixing high tyre wear is also extremely complicated. Not even Mercedes in 2013 was able to do it despite illegal tests with Pirelli. Yes they were very competitive in some tracks but nowhere in others. In 2023 Ferrari improved the situation by really managing the pace in key parts of the race, with upgrades aimed at making the car more stable, etc. but they never fixed the issue entirely. Only with a completely new chassis they changed the behaviour of the car.
I'm not saying that Ferrari project leaders are not good. I'm saying that Newey would improve the Team massively, especially in that particular area. It would also reduce the pressure on Cardile and the others, which could end up in them performing even better during the design/development stage.
Red Bull and Ferrari both managed to build a car which were not affected by porpoising - in case of Red Bull by not or almost not inducing any porpoising and in case of Ferrari by staying stable under porpoising. Both teams with Newey and Byrne knew about porpoising perfectly well in the building phase of their cars, but simply solved it each on their own way.
Last year Ferrari without any chassis or concept change significantly improved the race pace with the Japan floor. On the SF-24 the suspension redesign contributed the most in terms of race pace.
I’m not an aero expert, but I can remember some knowledgeable people (was it you, Vanja?) telling that only with the TD039 switching to a downwashing concept became the best option. It has never had anything to do with solving tyre wear issues. But I’m happy to be corrected.
That is HARDLY advocating for some high prioritization #1 role like most people think of it. This is just some 'if we had a gun to our heads and had to pick, we'd give Vettel the advantage', but says nothing of actually inherently favoring him in any typical situation. And this was proven because the team would make choices to favor either Kimi or Vettel depending on situation for the benefit of the team as a whole, not to favor any driver by default.AR3-GP wrote: ↑27 Apr 2024, 00:43https://theweek.com/formula-1/100739/f1 ... bull-chinaSpeaking at the Chinese Grand Prix Ferrari team principal Binotto said: “As I said at the start of the season, if there is any 50-50 situation where we need to take a decision, then the advantage would be given to Sebastian simply because Sebastian has got most of the experience with the team in F1.
“He won four championships and, certainly for us, he’s the driver who has the most probability to challenge for the title. We agreed with both drivers.”
Next topic.
To be honest, I believe the time loss right now is 6 months at most, which is the period between Bahrain and Japan last year. They did improve several things with launch SF23, namely drag. Downwash concept is not particularly complicated to master, it simply provides clean air all the way down to the mouse hole by using the ramp and long side wall. The time they lost was lost by going back with performance peak to a level where they again had wide-range stability in Barcelona. From then on, they gained both performance and driveability and with new chassis and suspension they improved with tyre deg.Xyz22 wrote: ↑27 Apr 2024, 13:16I've never said that. The F1 75 concept was great before TD 039 and the 2023 changes. What i said is that the Team failed to understand that the F1 75 concept would have not worked with these new changes. They made a conservative decision of sticking with just an evolution of the F1 75 which ended up losing 1.5 years of development compared to Red Bull as everyone now switched to the downwash concept. As you can see, the wrong decision of not switching to the downwash concept for the 2023 season (during 2022) impacted negatively the SF 23 and to an extent the SF 24 as well because Ferrari have way less know how compared to AMR, RB and even McL.
