Hush wrote:
Everybody and their dog knows that Ferrari are not happy with their performance and will most likely be behind come the first few races but where do you get the info that they don't understand the car?
What you will see in the fly away races is a patch job which is being optimised if Fry is to be believed and at the Mugello test they will revisit their initial solution.
I am particularly hard on Ferrari but a lot of people here are making things up as they go along as if to say they abandoned their initial solution because Newey was doing something else... It is more likely that they temporarily abandoned their own solution because it is just not working at present and instead racing a flawed concept they went for something more traditional in the interim with the hope of scoring as many points as possible.
That said, I don't expect much from Ferrari in the early going and fear that they are behind Lotus and might duke it out with Force India/Sauber.[/quote]
I'm with you here Hush. I think the team definitely have an understanding of the car right now, otherwise, well let's not go there. I think it's safe to say the data collected from 3,105 miles of winter testing have given them what they need. It's only a matter of implementing it.
I too don't think they will go with the Sauber/RB style exhaust. Domenicali specifically said
"We are still working on the original set up, but we will be unable to test it until the Mugello test at the beginning of May, because we believe it could give us a good performance advantage.”
So as you said what's ran in the first four races is the temporary solution until the can test the original one further after changes.
Where we don't agree is how far behind they are or aren't. Obviously the field is closer this year, but I don't think the team will fight it out with Sauber & SFI. Of course I don't know and I'll just have to wait and see but I don't think things are as bad as some people think.