Scuderia Ferrari 2014

[Ciro Pabón]

I see Ferrari on a slippery slope.

Arrivabene starts by explaining how great he is:

"I bring experience that has matured in my last company, the fact of knowing how to motivate people and to get the best out of them".

I don't know about the team but I guess some people get the impression he's pretty insecure.

No wonder: he's a marketing expert... working in a team that does no advertising.

Hours after Mattiacci said he was fully focused on helping the Italian outfit move forward with its plans for 2014, a statement from the Maranello team announced his departure in favour of Arrivabene


Now, Marchionne gives us a tirade explaining all the things that Montezzemolo did wrong, after claiming he wouldn't:

"I will try not to talk about 2014 because it has been a year to forget... The previous team leadership made strategic decisions that I disagreed with"

Twenty three years, including Schumacher's, and you say you disagree with me? Thanks a lot, Sergio


He ends by explaining to us that we shouldn't expect anything from him until 2016:

"We're late on the design of 2015 car. 2015 will be the year of the reconstruction that will test the team".

Is Alonso departure a good sign? People say yes, people says no.


If we take in account that Marchionne is a great economist, an administrator extraordinaire and a great lawyer, we can imagine the future of Ferrari as a racing team.

Many, many meetings


I commiserate Vettel and Clear.

May the Madonna protect them.


As for the forum rules that prevent people from explaining to us how great douchebags we are, well, that never has stopped us. We gloat on douchebaggery.

So, you can nag us with confidence and devotion, giantfan, you only have to follow the queue...

[Manoah2u]

dude seriously, take a chill pill.

when i see an idiotic opinion i will call it that.

exactly this disrespect towards others is what several board members have been 'calling' you on, just aswell.

[WickedF1]

I think it is good that Ferrari is finally reorganizing the company from the bottom to the top. They have a new factory and new leaders, plus new men with a new structure. Maybe we are going to struggle in the season to get used to the new organization but in 2016 I think we will see good results from these changes. I am a fan of the drivers, so I am very happy with the line up. I am also a fan of Allison he has been a part of projects that worked well. So now we will see but overall I am happy.

[Crucial_Xtreme]

Good thing alonso is gone, same BS. Same old, same old. How many times have I heared this story? ugh.

Mclaren has passed the crash test at the least a week ago I remember.

I like Ferrari as the heritage Ferrari team, i could care less about things today. I do hope the Vettel combo will start
a fresh start into the front, but frankly, i'm hoping Alonso-Mclaren will blow them away when Alonso is winning and
Ferrari at 9th and 10th spots. Why? because I hope it would be a real wake up call. A wake up call that there's something
genuinly wrong with Ferrari, and not to blame it on the driver.

If arguably what should be the best team in the world has to use Sauber and Toyota wind tunnels, and their simulation models don't correspond to real life, then there is something genuinly wrong over there. Perhaps the 'clean sweep' at Ferrari will result in what they want; a fresh start to fix stuff.

Same old story writing however makes me feel like we're still seeing the same Ferrari just with different people in it.

Hey, i'd like nothing more than the reds going for the win again - but it's been too much of a deja-vu since schumacher left.

Ferrari is done using other wind tunnels since the upgrades to the Maranello tunnel. I think 2014 proved the correlation issues that have plagued the team over recent years is over. The updates they did introduce they tested in FP and used for Quali and the race. Something that didn't happen often in previous years.

I think it will take time for Ferrari to regain any type of winning form. I don't expect much from them until 2016. It sounds like we may see an uptick in form in the latter stages of 2015 but only time will tell.

[Andres125sx]

Luckily Alonso is out... luckily for Alonso of course, 2015 will show people what ferrari look like without best driver on the grid

Four seassons promising things will improve, with same results. People complaining about Alonso like if Massa or Kimi would be winning regulary and it was Alonso the one failing...

Alonso was probably very harmful for Ferrari, he´s so good his results made people think those cars were much better than they really were, so they didn´t change things as drastically as they had to.

Not even Massa´s perfomance with Williams made people realize how slow Ferrari is, not even Kimi´s poor results made people realize what´s Ferrari´s real perfomance. 2015 will be enlightening with another two WDC, top 5 at WCC will be best result I can think about for them next seasson

[NL_Fer]

Well it's true that in the first races, everybody could see in Mattiaci's eyes, he did not have a clue what everybody in the team was doing. Also he did not know his own role. I believe he learned pretty quick, but it was still to late and not fast enough to turn Ferrari around.

[Andres125sx]

Well it's true that in the first races, everybody could see in Mattiaci's eyes, he did not have a clue what everybody in the team was doing. Also he did not know his own role. I believe he learned pretty quick, but it was still to late and not fast enough to turn Ferrari around.

F1 is not the place to learn, I still can´t believe they put someone with no experience in that field in front of the F1 team

They´re so far from top teams it´s almost unbelieveble they invest so much money, but with decisions like that you mention it´s not that weird their perfomance is what it is

[GitanesBlondes]

Too bad Ferrari didn't ditch that pull rod suspension.

Would have made a world of a difference in the sort of car that they fielded the past few seasons.

Anyway, as far as Mattiaci goes, I believe he was sacked in favor of Arrivabene because of of his connection to Phillip Morris/Marlboro. IIRC, the Ferrari-Marlboro deal ends at the end of the 2015 season. I wouldn't be surprised if this deal gets extended beyond that. Arrivabene is probably there to yes run the team obviously, but to fulfill some wishes of Philip Morris. Mattiaci was the wrong guy at the wrong time, nothing more, and an easy scapegoat for Marchionne.

I have little faith in Marchionne, and wish he would stick to the running of the Fiat empire instead of getting near motorsports as everything goes south whenever he has opinions.

[Crucial_Xtreme]

Too bad Ferrari didn't ditch that pull rod suspension.

Would have made a world of a difference in the sort of car that they fielded the past few seasons.

Really? Please elaborate. In 2012, the first year of the pull rod front suspension, had Fernando not been hit by RoGro in Spa and gotten tangled with Kimi in Japan, he would've won the WDC. The pull rod front suspension worked just fine in 2012. In 2013 the front pull rod was fine in China and worked really well when Fernando blitzed the field in Barcelona. It worked well in Monza too. This year the F14T was awful because of the PU, not the suspension so please explain to me how a push rod front suspension would have made a world of difference and explain what's wrong with the front pull rod to begin with, please.

[Harsha]

Too bad Ferrari didn't ditch that pull rod suspension.

Would have made a world of a difference in the sort of car that they fielded the past few seasons.

Really? Please elaborate. In 2012, the first year of the pull rod front suspension, had Fernando not been hit by RoGro in Spa and gotten tangled with Kimi in Japan, he would've won the WDC. The pull rod front suspension worked just fine in 2012. In 2013 the front pull rod was fine in China and worked really well when Fernando blitzed the field in Barcelona. It worked well in Monza too. This year the F14T was awful because of the PU, not the suspension so please explain to me how a push rod front suspension would have made a world of difference and explain what's wrong with the front pull rod to begin with, please.

Do you have any more info on mounting points of suspension scarbs said about mounting points of 2015 might help with pull rod than push .

[bhall II]

...explain what's wrong with the front pull rod to begin with, please.

Meanwhile, there is a much bigger disadvantage to using pull-rod suspension in terms of the limitations it creates in being able to tune the car's handling.

If you move the push-rod mounting point backwards or forwards of the fulcrum of the top and bottom wishbone, you can transfer load across the car when the driver is steering and effectively lighten the front wheel.

That means the car can be tuned to work in both high- and low-speed corners.

It allows you to make the car softer and more compliant in low-speed corners without softening the suspension - thereby keeping the high mechanical stiffness you need in the car for high-speed corners.

But the pull-rod is connected to the wishbone, not the upright, so that tuning facility is not available in the same way for Ferrari.

You can still do some of it with the king-pin and castor angles, but anything you do that helps you in one area of the track will hurt you in another.

That compromise doesn't exist with push-rods. So getting the ideal balance in handling characteristics for both low- and high-speed corners is tougher with pull-rod front suspension than with push-rod.

Ferrari have effectively taken a tool out of their tool kit.

The pull rod was also connected to the wishbone on the F14T. So, if Anderson's analysis of the F2012 is correct, the problem remained in 2014.



Without a huge need for a positive front-end to suit his driving style, Alonso could reap the benefit of this layout, regardless of any detrimental effects. But, Alonso's gone, and Raikkonen has often expressed a disdain for a lack of a strong turn-in, a problem perhaps exacerbated by the front suspension. (I believe it's why Raikkonen looked so bad this year compared to his teammate.)

"Since the go-karts, if it doesn't turn and the front doesn't bite I've never liked it. My driving style is more about trying to carry the speed into the corners and keep it up in the mid-corner. It's the way I'm used to doing thing but obviously it changes every year and with every car, but I still think it's the fastest way and when you get the car working for you as you want the fastest maximum speed - for me at least - can be found that way."

"It's something that's lacking from the car right now and if you cannot put the car where you want and brake where you want because of locking or sliding the front then it becomes a guessing game about where you are going to be. And if you miss a little bit the corner you are going to miss a lot of speed on the next straight. It sounds like a small thing, but around one lap when you keep guessing every corner it creates quite a big deficit. A few races it has been pretty okay and then most races it has been like that where you fight every corner and then the time difference is quite big."

Just my anecdotal $0.02.

[SectorOne]

Kimi Raikkonen says he is still unhappy with the front end on his Lotus after practice for the Indian Grand Prix.

I don´t think pushrods is a magic bullet when it comes to front ends and the Kimster.
But it will be interesting to see if he comes back stronger with a change in suspension.

[Crucial_Xtreme]

The pull rod was also connected to the wishbone on the F14T. So, if Anderson's analysis of the F2012 is correct, the problem remained in 2014.



Without a huge need for a positive front-end to suit his driving style, Alonso could reap the benefit of this layout, regardless of any detrimental effects. But, Alonso's gone, and Raikkonen has often expressed a disdain for a lack of a strong turn-in, a problem perhaps exacerbated by the front suspension. (I believe it's why Raikkonen looked so bad this year compared to his teammate.)


Just my anecdotal $0.02.

Rite on, thing is Anderson has always had an issue with Ferrari in general and the pull rod front suspension. He hasn't been a fan of it since they introduced it in 2012 and has criticized it ever since. When they first released it, he had a completely different reason as to why he thought it was no good and now he has this.

Regardless of his opinion, the pull rod front has worked fine, no? There's always "what if's", but clearly without the Spa & Japan incidents in 2012 Fer would've won the 2012 WDC with said suspension. It's been good enough to win races and damn near the WDC. It worked well in 2013 too, obviously it wasn't the suspension the held Ferrari back in 2013. IMO same goes for 2014.

I have no issue with Anderson or anyone thinking that a push rod front suspension is better than pull rod. However I do take issue with people who assert it's the cause of all of their problems or claim like above that without the pull rod front suspension "Would have made a world of a difference in the sort of car that they fielded the past few seasons."

Such an assertion should be backed up with facts.

[WickedF1]

Luckily Alonso is out... luckily for Alonso of course, 2015 will show people what ferrari look like without best driver on the grid

Four seassons promising things will improve, with same results. People complaining about Alonso like if Massa or Kimi would be winning regulary and it was Alonso the one failing...

Alonso was probably very harmful for Ferrari, he´s so good his results made people think those cars were much better than they really were, so they didn´t change things as drastically as they had to.

Not even Massa´s perfomance with Williams made people realize how slow Ferrari is, not even Kimi´s poor results made people realize what´s Ferrari´s real perfomance. 2015 will be enlightening with another two WDC, top 5 at WCC will be best result I can think about for them next seasson

Drivers is not the issue for Ferrari. Ferrari did not want Alonso to go, he left the team. The team now has to move forward with the drivers who will help the team. But everyone in the team knows it is the car that has to be improved, not the drivers. I hope the car is going to be better next season to show that the new team is going to move in the right direction.

[Andres125sx]

With Alonso out and people in charge at Ferrari stating 2015 will be a difficult seasson, I wouldn´t bet for that