Ferrari's blunders

[schumi]

Yep, I've now deemed them stupid enough to have their own thread - I don't doubt there will be plenty to post over the coming months.

Picture the scene - Luca di Montezemolo, after the death of his father, chooses Stefano Domenicali to represent the team for talks with the FIA regarding the budget cap. This is an important meeting - Ferrari could pull out of Formula One at the end of the year, and bring to an end 60 years of history if they can't persuade Max Mosely that it's in the sport's best interests to change the proposed rules. So you'd think Domenicali would be properly briefed, wouldn't you? Wrong. The brains at Ferrari "forgot" one minor detail - and that was to tell Stefano they'd taken out an injunction against the FIA.

No doubt Max Mosely took great delight in putting him in the picture. Here's a quote from him:

"I thought that was quite original to send a team principal in without informing him of his team's intentions. I think he was slightly embarrassed."

[Genghis]

Planet F1 are taking great delight at Ferraris' list of 2009 blunders:

Ferrari's start to the 2009 season has been nothing short of a disaster as the Scuderia seem to return to, in the words of Niki Lauda, the "spaghetti culture" that they were notorious for during the chaotic days of the 1970s and 1980s.

An underperforming F60 should have been the least of Ferrari's worries this season. However, the Italian marque - the most successful and longest-serving team in F1 - have compounded the situation with their own silly mistakes.

PF1 takes a look at Ferrari's 2009 cock-ups, one by one, race by race...

Australian Grand Prix
*The season starts badly. Very badly
* Felipe Massa retires with a steering problem, later admitting that the team opted for a "very aggressive strategy, which with hindsight turned out to be the wrong one."
* Team-mate Kimi Raikkonen soon joins him on the sidelines after crashing off. "It was my mistake," he concedes.
* It's the first time since 1992 that Ferrari have failed to score in the opening race.

Malaysian Grand Prix
* Massa, who was second fastest in Friday practice, is eliminated after the first round of qualifying after the team mistakenly judge his time to be good enough and keep him in the garage rather than sending him out for another flying lap.
* The team then cost Raikkonen any chance of scoring points when he is sent out on full wet tyres during the grand prix on a bone-dry track. "And that was where my race was pretty much over," says Raikkonen.
* Matters are almost as bad on the other side of the garage with Massa put on slicks while it was pouring with rain. A lap later, he has to return to the pits. "We definitely need to analyse our mistakes and understand how they can be avoided," he reports afterwards.
* Raikkonen, meanwhile, is seen helping himself to an ice-cream while the Ferrari press officer informs the world that he hasn't yet retired from the race.

Chinese Grand Prix
* A blatant lack of pace in the F60 sees Massa fail to make it into Q3 for the second successive race weekend.
* Raikkonen manages to qualify P8 despite a gearbox problem for the former World Champ.
* Massa puts aside his old issues in the rain to charge up to third place but on lap 21 his F60 lets him down and he's out of the race. He explained: "The accelerator would not work and the car went quiet."
* With Raikkonen finishing out of the points, it's the first time since 1981 that Ferrari have fail to score in the opening three races. The crisis deepens...

Bahrain Grand Prix
* Starting from eighth and 10th on the grid, Massa and Raikkonen collide, forcing Massa to return to the the pits for a new front wing. His race goes from bad to worse when his telemetry and KERS system malfunction. "Mamma Mia! Felipe dropped to the back of the pack and not able to do much," said team boss Stefano Domenicali. Yes, he really does say "mamma mia!".
* But the good news is that Raikkonen's three points from sixth place see Ferrari avoid their worst start ever to a F1 season. Just.

Spanish Grand Prix
* Raikkonen fails to make it through Q1 as for the second time this season Ferrari assume their pace is better than it is and their driver is bumped out of the final 15 as he idles in the garage.
* Raikkonen starts the race with his KERS device already causing problems while a "hydraulic problem linked to the control of the accelerator" puts him out of the grand prix on lap 19.
* Massa, who didn't have a single issue the whole weekend and looked set to finish in the third place, finally crosses the line P6 after
a) Ferrari put him on a long final stint meaning he has to spend too much time on the far-slower harder Bridgestone tyres. It costs him valuable seconds on every lap and allows Mark Webber to overhaul him...
b) Ferrari realise too late that he is a lap short for fuel due to a problem with their rig. As a result, Massa has to coast through the final laps and is overtaken by Seb Vettel and Fernando Alonso.
* Massa's three points see Ferrari seventh in the Constructors' Championship, 62 points behind Brawn GP and only two ahead of Toro Rosso.