Ferrari F2012

[xpensive]

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Yes teams make mistakes all the time, but Ferrari said they did much research in this area and have concluded it won't be a problem.
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I'm sure they did much research on the rest of the car as well and thought the same?

[Crucial_Xtreme]

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Yes teams make mistakes all the time, but Ferrari said they did much research in this area and have concluded it won't be a problem.
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I'm sure they did much research on the rest of the car as well and thought the same?

Right, but comparing aerodynamics & suspensions are completely different. With the latter being less difficult. The team has never said anything about problems with their 7 post rig, but they have had wind tunnel & CFD issues.

[banibhusan]

Right, but comparing aerodynamics & suspensions are completely different. With the latter being less difficult. The team has never said anything about problems with their 7 post rig, but they have had wind tunnel & CFD issues.

We have to believe what the whole team is saying. And if all are saying that the front pull rod is not causing any problem, then that should be true. The inherent issue for the Ferrari in the past few years has been the lack of downforce and it's the same this year also, which they have already admitted.

Though I would love to see Ferrari fighting for wins and WDC this year. But what I feel is, Ferrari should be focusing even more on upgrading their infrastructure and refine their processes for subsequent years. The Mugello upgrade would shape the rest of the year for Ferrari. I hope it does work and they understand where they were lacking exactly.

[Gilles 27]

Ferrari has began early last year to develope the new car, right? Again like year before... And again looks like a flop!
IMHO the hole developing crew should be fired!!!
And the aerodynamic departement? The achilles' heel of the hole team!
It's such a shame that from 2008 the reds are everytime failure in there projects (lack of F-Duct, no DD, no blowong diffusor...) no groundbreakin ideas since Brawn and Byrne has gone...
In there projects.
And now they talk about less traction... Comon guys wake up we need a winning Ferrari Crew!

[xpensive]

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We have to believe what the whole team is saying. And if all are saying that the front pull rod is not causing any problem, then that should be true.
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Really, would you kindly elaborate on why a unison voice from any F1 team should be taken as the truth of the day?

[Crucial_Xtreme]

Really, would you kindly elaborate on why a unison voice from any F1 team should be taken as the truth of the day?

In a way he has a point, and you do too of course. We can't always believe what the teams say thats for sure. But in the case, Ferrari has been rather transparent with the situation of the car. I don't believe they'll tell us major problems with the exhaust and other issues and just leave out the suspension. Pat Fry has proven to be a very sincere guy over the last 2 months. When the team says there's no need for a chassis change, I believe them. Why lie? It is impossible to keep it a secret, as the records are public.

Then you have the Italian media. Very critical of the F2012 and the team. AutoSprint for instance. Totally called out the car in testing.(I posted the article here in this thread). They went over the entire car & the entire winter tests. They told what was wrong and what was right. Let's also remember they have some inside lines in the team and can verify information. One thing to note when they were saying how bad the car was in testing, was that the suspension was fine and would not need to be changed. Probably only tweaked a bit. I don't think they would criticize the car in the manner they did only to lie about the suspension and other parts they were in good shape.

Either way, we will see in Barcelona if they change to push rod front, or stay with pull rod.

[markp]

Possibly the exhaust is core issue and has cumulative effect on everything else. Due to lack of rear grip front downforce taken off balance suspension compromised to suit this etc. Maybe once exhausts are sorted the reverse is true and even greater gains than in simulation due to increased driver confidence.

[Afterburner]

Really, would you kindly elaborate on why a unison voice from any F1 team should be taken as the truth of the day?

In a way he has a point, and you do too of course. We can't always believe what the teams say thats for sure. But in the case, Ferrari has been rather transparent with the situation of the car. I don't believe they'll tell us major problems with the exhaust and other issues and just leave out the suspension. Pat Fry has proven to be a very sincere guy over the last 2 months. When the team says there's no need for a chassis change, I believe them. Why lie? It is impossible to keep it a secret, as the records are public.

Then you have the Italian media. Very critical of the F2012 and the team. AutoSprint for instance. Totally called out the car in testing.(I posted the article here in this thread). They went over the entire car & the entire winter tests. They told what was wrong and what was right. Let's also remember they have some inside lines in the team and can verify information. One thing to note when they were saying how bad the car was in testing, was that the suspension was fine and would not need to be changed. Probably only tweaked a bit. I don't think they would criticize the car in the manner they did only to lie about the suspension and other parts they were in good shape.

Either way, we will see in Barcelona if they change to push rod front, or stay with pull rod.

They also said they would be fighting for pole in Melbourne and we all saw what happened.

I don't think the problema with this car isn't only the acer ducts and the pull rod, they changed all suspension to pull rod without understanding it very well and now they don't have traction, they've combined u-pods, diferent cooling arrangement and acer ducts all together without knowing none of the concepts and on top of that i've listened from a rival team member that F2012 has a high CG compared to rivals. They've gambled too much, almost in an irreversable way.

[xpensive]

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I don't think the problema with this car isn't only the acer ducts and the pull rod, they changed all suspension to pull rod without understanding it very well and now they don't have traction, they've combined u-pods, diferent cooling arrangement and acer ducts all together without knowing none of the concepts and on top of that i've listened from a rival team member that F2012 has a high CG compared to rivals. They've gambled too much, almost in an irreversable way.

Good call, perhaps even terminal, why I believe we will see a new tub in Spain.

[Forza Ferrari]

Felipe will be using chassis n°294 instead of n°293 for the malaysian GP.

I thought it was strange the nando got to use n°295 and felipe "only" n°293... it was quite blatant that there was something wrong with n°293..

Anyway, it just shows that when a new piece is available, nando has the priority over it

[Afterburner]

Good call, perhaps even terminal, why I believe we will see a new tub in Spain.

I wish i'm wrong but if results we're already like this on a track like Melbourne, in Sepang they'll be much worse i'm afraid, long straights, high speed and low speed corners, abrasive surface, none suit F2012.

Ferrari should keep on improving this car, new tub if necessary, try win some races at the end of the championship and get a good baseline for next years car.

[Crucial_Xtreme]

They also said they would be fighting for pole in Melbourne and we all saw what happened.

I don't think the problema with this car isn't only the acer ducts and the pull rod, they changed all suspension to pull rod without understanding it very well and now they don't have traction, they've combined u-pods, diferent cooling arrangement and acer ducts all together without knowing none of the concepts and on top of that i've listened from a rival team member that F2012 has a high CG compared to rivals. They've gambled too much, almost in an irreversable way.

Please show me any quote from the team that said they would be fighting for the pole. You can't find one because it was not said. By anyone in the team. You are referring to a story from spanish publication MARCA. And they took Fernando's words out of context. Fernando wasn't saying for weeks that the team would have to grit it's teeth in the first races, then suddenly change to we can fight for pole.

As for the rest, I agree they're not familiar with the new suspensions and it will take them a bit to find the sweet spot, same as it took other teams. The sidepods on the F2012 are basically the same as last year, just smaller. The car isn't overheating so I don't really see how new cooling is hurting them.
Their main problems are lack of downforce & the lack of knowledge on properly setting up the pull rod suspensions.

[Gridlock]

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This years car has no problem getting the tyres to work on the first lap. This problem is fixed. I also think the fact Alonso started the race on softs and had pretty decent pace on both softs and mediums shows this is no longer an issue. But for some reason you ignore this fact.

Source: Pat Fry, Stefano Domenicali. --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVjGiraUSs8

I phrased it badly sorry - they have cracked tyre warm up, but at the obvious expense of early and rapid degradation. Ie the tyres are far from working perfectly.

[muelte]

Felipe will be using chassis n°294 instead of n°293 for the malaysian GP.

I thought it was strange the nando got to use n°295 and felipe "only" n°293... it was quite blatant that there was something wrong with n°293..

Anyway, it just shows that when a new piece is available, nando has the priority over it

Oh, come on! Chassis are all exactly the same, number means nothing, only production order. Massa is going to use the 'spare' chassis 294 just to check if there was something wrong with his.

I'm afraid this forum (great, the best technical reference avaiable) is starting to go down the hill with the level of some posts & discussions... Massa conspirancy theories here is bad news.

[xpensive]

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We have to believe what the whole team is saying. And if all are saying that the front pull rod is not causing any problem, then that should be true. The inherent issue for the Ferrari in the past few years has been the lack of downforce and it's the same this year also, which they have already admitted.
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My quarter of a century worth of xperience with engineers has taught me that as a general rule, they find it easier to be critical to their own design when they have something or someone to share the blame with, like a demented draftsman or a faulty calibrated windtunnel, than admitting that an innovative design they have so proudly championed, like a novel mousetrap or a funny looking front suspension, is crap.