I have faith in our group of engineers - Costa
Fifth place, eight tenths off pole position is not satisfactory, but finally, there are signs of progress from Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro. “We tried a lot of things yesterday in free practice, some aimed at this weekend, others for future development,” said Technical Director Aldo Costa in his usual meeting with the press on Saturday afternoon.
“Specifically, we tried various front wing configurations, a new rear wing, a new design for our car of front brake ducts and a floor. There will be other new parts in Barcelona where I expect we can make an even bigger step forward. When we will start winning again? I hope it’s soon: we would like to be back to being in the fight for the win in the next few races.”
One of the most discussed matters is the problem with the correlation of data produced in the Maranello wind tunnel. “It’s not that unusual, but obviously when it happens at Ferrari it creates a lot more interest,” explained Costa. “We have had to re-examine something in our structure and also in the design of the wind tunnel itself but I would not want to go into too many details. On top of that, we have an intensive renewal programme which will be completed after the summer break, around September and October. However, this does not mean the wind tunnel won’t be working in the meantime, in fact it will be fully operational. We have understood and resolved various problems and we continue to work on improving the whole structure.”
A recent interview with Nikolas Tombazis in the Italian paper, Corriere della Sera on Tuesday made some waves as he analysed with great transparency the current difficult moment that the Scuderia is going through on the technical side and Costa followed the same line adopted by his chief designer: “At a critical time like this, one has to come up with new ideas and set new objectives, changing our approach,” said the engineer from Parma. “It needs new input because when one works for so many years on the same thing, you can lose sight of the bigger picture and maybe it’s better to make a change. That does not necessarily mean that heads must roll, but if anything, we should give a new direction to people’s jobs. We have great confidence in the people who work in Maranello: we have highly skilled engineers and they make up a very united group and are reacting in the right way to this crisis.”
Source Ferrari
