Op-Ed: Not buying Ferrari’s ‘cautious’ comments
February 4, 2010 by SJ Skid
Filed under F1B Op-Ed, Prime & Option, SJ Skid
Ferrari’s Stefano Domenicali is getting a lot of coverage today of comments he’s made that the team is staying very cautious despite a strong-looking first test session.
His comments come via Ferrari, which titles this release “Domenicali recommending caution”:
“We know very well that the tests’ lap times, especially this year, have to be handled with care. Using an Italian expression from football, we’re still in ‘August football’,” Stefano Domenicali, the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro’s Team Principal, told Ferrari.com. “We can’t forget where we were in terms of performance at the last GP last year. There is still a lot of work to do to close the gap and there are still many problems we have to solve. And then we don’t know the petrol loads the other cars had on board, so it’s impossible to get a clear idea of the relative strengths on the track. Maybe someone also wants to play hide and seek and some still have to present their cars.”
The Ferrari release, in fact, ends by saying:
Eventually Domenicali recommended caution: “There are no miracles in Formula 1: if you want to be fast you have to work hard for months and months and then you’ll meet your competitors, who have as much capacities and are as motivated as you. We can’t take anything for granted and we shouldn’t delude ourselves by indications, which could be completely misleading. We can’t work like in football where two good or bad results are enough to pass from riches to rags or vice versa.”
All good points, I’ll grant you. But then I will direct you to current Ferrari home page. If it has changed by the time you get there, here’s a basic description:
There’s a photo of Fernando Alonso in the cockpit (probably back in a garage, judging by the ground). He’s got his gloved left hand raised (a white glove, by the way, but I can’t tell if there’s any Santander logos). The wording across the photo: Alonso fastest driver in Valencia.
So… I think Ferrari may be a bit more enthused than Stefano is letting on.
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Or, of course, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing! (Perhaps it doesn’t recognise the funny coloured glove.)
Of course, Domenicali is talking to a different audience compared to the front page of the website. The website is PR and marketing, while Domenicali is much more speaking to the fans, trying not to build up unrealistic expectations.
Stefano might be a bit late… 35,000 fans show up for Alonso’s debut? I think unrealistic expectations are officially unstoppable!
Okay, I’m wandering around their site, looking at the images of the launch and two big things jumped out at me…
1. The diffuser was shrouded at the launch by black (what appears to be) gauze.
2. There are NO wheel spats.
Checking the Valencia pics… nope NO wheel spats.
Saw a pic of the glove… has part of the Santander name on it showing.
I was trying to be modest about how awesome i am but i failed. It seems even one as great as me can’t get everything right. How modest of me saying that, am so awesome.
Far too early. I remember last season when Kimi and Massa showed the true speed of the car in an Australian practice session but failed to captilise on it. With the fuel loads this year the first few races are going to be open.
I think they should lay low, even if they think they’re fast, so that someone doesn’t decide to tag them at the first turn in the spirit of Michael Schumacher (much less driving the other teams to actually work on their cars).
But they were at the front of this week’s charts even making long runs. Unlike a team like Sauber that ran fast but you can’t tell from the short lap amounts if there was any fuel.