- 25 Apr 12, 06:41#301348IMO the next 4 scheduled track days are make or break for Ferrari. Having said that, I'm nowhere near as pessimistic about the F2012 as most pundits and the general public seem to be.
Yes, the car's performance is behind McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull and possibly Lotus on average. But I don't think its anywhere near as bad as some have portrayed. If I had to put a figure on it, I'd suggest that in Australia the F2012 was 1.2+ seconds per lap behind the best and, by Bahrain I'd put it at about half that (.6).
There are some positives, firstly I'd say that Ferrari would be very close to the best in terms of tire wear while at the same time having the largest window of performance in terms of ambient temperatures and track conditions. As well, last years woes of not being able to heat our tires has been completely fixed.
These next 4 days will also see the F2012 completely together as originally planned. The Spanish upgrade package was talked about even before the first day of testing. The deployment of the F2012 was planned this way because of the testing limitations. There was no way all the new parts of this radically different car could be tested in the time available. This made testing easier and provided time to fine tune part 2.
In reality there have been no significant upgrades (exhaust, sidepods, radiator, acer ducts etc) to the car since Australia, which means that the relative performance improvements have come simply from better understand the car.
Also, China and Bahrain were simply the worst tracks possible to expose the weaknesses of the F2012 - lack of traction driving out of corners and downforce in slow corners. Yet, in race trim the F2012 was mostly able to keep up.
It's also worth considering that, the F2012 still has not run with its designed exhaust. It has done 4 races with a makeshift system. A serious spanner was thrown in the works when testing began for the F2012. If we recall, the exhaust was almost immediately removed and a makeshift system added. The original exhaust pointed to the outside (just like McLaren, Sauber and Red Bull) but, was placed far further back. The result, it basically cooked the tires. I fully expect to see the original style exhaust back on the car by Barcelona, and this should provide a significant performance boost.
There was a report yesterday in Gazzetta dello sport that Ferrari will shift to a Sauber style exhaust and that it won't be shown until Friday practice at Barcelona. Personally I think this is very unlikely.
I would caution against over stating the expectations for Barcelona. I'd say the criteria for success would be to halve the gap, ie if we are .6 behind now, then to get to within .3 of the lead car would be a great effort. And, to put that in perspective, every team will be bringing major upgrades before Spain, so they will all improve significantly.
I'd expect both McLaren to be very focused on tire wear and drop off in race trim. Red Bull to increase top speed - probably by trying to reduce drag. Mercedes will probably look at tire wear but also at widening their tire optimum performance window.
"He was the fastest driver I ever saw - faster even than Fangio"
________________________- Mike Hawthorn on Alberto Ascari 
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