Ferrari - Chris Dyer pays for the Abu Dhabi strategy

[Richard]

Pat Fry has replaced Chris Dyer as head of race track engineering at Ferrari following Fernando Alonso's failure to win the 2010 world championship.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsp ... 338316.stm

[Giblet]

Dyer has been behind a few questionable calls, or at least, calls made under his whip.

[nipo]

Ferrari used to be excellent at race strategies, but in the recent few years that was no more. These two years saw some particularly stupid decisions made and I think it reached the peak at Abu Dhabi. The logical side tells me there are a lot more mistakes than the one in the final race that caused Dyer to go out.

Another side of me, though, tells me that Alonso must have been shouting and screeming like the cry baby he's always been and demanded somebody to pay for this. As long as he's there I'm sure a lot of "funny" things like this will happen at Ferrari, I'll just sit back and enjoy.

[raymondu999]

Was Fry ever a track or data engineer? I thought he was more of a designer/aerodynamicist type engineer... and he's still holding his job as Aldo Costa's second man right?

[CHT]

Was just watching the replay of the Abu Dhabi race the other. Judging by the amount of time Ferrari had to make the call to bring Alonso in, I must say that whoever who made that decision doesnt deserve to be working in a top team like Ferrari.

[raymondu999]

Come on now. Let's not jump to quick conclusions. In the heat of the moment your thinking might not be 100% clear. And if they wait too long, they might pay the price. They have to think quick when it's hot, and to bide their time when things aren't. Imagine if you're in Ferrari's place. And you were faced by the possibility that the tyres might have worn down to the canvas like on Lewis in China 07.

[CHT]

Come on now. Let's not jump to quick conclusions. In the heat of the moment your thinking might not be 100% clear. And if they wait too long, they might pay the price. They have to think quick when it's hot, and to bide their time when things aren't. Imagine if you're in Ferrari's place. And you were faced by the possibility that the tyres might have worn down to the canvas like on Lewis in China 07.

Rosberg and Petrov pitted on lap 1
webber on lap 11.
Massa lap 13
Alonso lap 15.

Between lap 11 and lap 15 Ferrari has almost 7 minutes to make the call on Alonso. How they got it so wrong is really beyond me

[nipo]

Come on now. Let's not jump to quick conclusions. In the heat of the moment your thinking might not be 100% clear. And if they wait too long, they might pay the price. They have to think quick when it's hot, and to bide their time when things aren't. Imagine if you're in Ferrari's place. And you were faced by the possibility that the tyres might have worn down to the canvas like on Lewis in China 07.

Well that conclusion might not be as quick as you think. I think it's been discussed quite some time and it was admitted even by the team that they were too focused on Webber that they lost track of other things that could happen, which did happen. It wasn't a sudden-safety-car-pit-or-not kind of situation.

And it shouldn't be a hot decision anyway. A professional team in a high risk volatile business should always go into battle with loads of alternative plans. Decision makers should not be relying on judgement alone, but should be backed up by pre-run simulations, estimates, historical data and reactive plans built upon this information. Tires degrading at funny times at a funny rate is a tough situation, yes, but it should not have caught Ferrari by such a surprise. If they had so much money and research done into perfecting their driving simulators, why then can't they have a software generate hundreds of meaningful race scenarios to aid the on-the-spot-in-the-heat decision making process?

It's just not professional that they missed the possibility of Vettel staying ahead. Whether that's Chris Dyer's fault, though, is not up to me to decide.

[mach11]

The reason this decision is being taken almost a month n half after the abu dhabi raises loads of questions.

Chris Dyer made a decision considering the situation Fernando was during the race. These are split second decisions that you can never train for. It comes from years of experience.

For all you know, Chris might be facing the heat but might not have played a major role when this call was taken.

The whole situation is debatable.

[marcush.]

I expect alll people in F1 to be the very best.
about race strategy ...that is one area where all the maths and degrees won´t help you ..even being a genius in car design will not help at all.I remember Newey standing at the pitwall after demanding more responsibilty and both cars starting the race on slicks when it really rained cats and dogs....the decision was taken after weather forecast considerations...
you need other talents to be a top strategist and maybe no real qualifications.It`s more like speedchess...

[myurr]

Come on now. Let's not jump to quick conclusions. In the heat of the moment your thinking might not be 100% clear. And if they wait too long, they might pay the price. They have to think quick when it's hot, and to bide their time when things aren't. Imagine if you're in Ferrari's place. And you were faced by the possibility that the tyres might have worn down to the canvas like on Lewis in China 07.

Rosberg and Petrov pitted on lap 1
webber on lap 11.
Massa lap 13
Alonso lap 15.

Between lap 11 and lap 15 Ferrari has almost 7 minutes to make the call on Alonso. How they got it so wrong is really beyond me

And what was Alonso saying at the time over the radio about tyre degradation?

[Richard]

the tyres might have worn down to the canvas like on Lewis in China 07.

China 07 was because Hamilton tried to go for a win rather than shadowing Kimi. It should have been the simplest strategy possible since he only had one person to follow. It just shows that strange choices are made when under pressure, and people are tempted to gamble when there is a hint of glory.

Abu Dhabi 10 was because Alsonso shadowed Webber instead of Vettel. The team were caught on a dilemma to either shadow the nearest in the WDC (which Hamilton should have done in China) or the race leader.

Webber was grossly out of position on quali, so he had to gamble to see if something unusual would help him up the track, he had little other choice. It appears that gamble gave Ferrari an element of doubt. The rest is history

[segedunum]

It wasn't his fault. Ferrari made a decision that Alonso was going to be the only driver in the title hunt and so they had to cover either Webber or Vettel. You can't cover two strategy forks with one driver. For some reason Ferrari believed that once they told Massa "Nope, you will never challenge for a title again" with all the development going in Alonso's direction he was going to magically be at the front helping Alonso.

In addition, no one thought the soft tyres were going to last that long. Alonso didn't believe it and Vettel and Hamilton just lucked out with going long on the soft tyres because they had no option if they wanted to stay ahead of Kubica, I think.

The wheels have started to come off at Ferrari and things will only get worse as Alonso's ego starts pervading everything. I cannot believe that Chris Dyer is the only one responsible for what happened. "A typical Italian reaction", as Montezemelo ironically called it when people started calling for heads to roll.

[Goran2812]

[sarcasm]yeah, Alonso is to blame for everything... that stupid f*** [/sarcasm]

[mep]

A professional team in a high risk volatile business should always go into battle with loads of alternative plans. Decision makers should not be relying on judgement alone, but should be backed up by pre-run simulations, estimates, historical data and reactive plans built upon this information. Tires degrading at funny times at a funny rate is a tough situation, yes, but it should not have caught Ferrari by such a surprise. If they had so much money and research done into perfecting their driving simulators, why then can't they have a software generate hundreds of meaningful race scenarios to aid the on-the-spot-in-the-heat decision making process?

This sounds like the attitude that only because there are clever mans sitting in front of PC with lots of money involved they know and can do everything.
Such a situation where 11 cars where involved can't be predicted and presimulated. There are simply to many unknowns and human decisions included.
That's the reason why I want to see refueling back. It makes the races much more complicated and you can't simply go to the race with your preplanned strategy and expect it to work under all circumstances. When things happen on track you must keep an overview and initially decide. Your decision then pays of or it goes wrong. You shouldn't blame Dyer for that pit call to harsh It's also possible that Alonso had already lost in lap 1 when he didn't came to an early stop. Also Webber could have done so and then Ferrari would have to react. This would lead to a completely different race. One of the most important moments in this race was lap one and the Schumacher crash. In this moment all teams have to make a decision within seconds.

Remember the Monza race when Alonso’s changes to win the GP drastically increased in first lap because Hamilton (who was placed behind him) crashed out and therefore limited McLaren with their strategies. If the system gets more variables it will become more and more complicated and you must base your decisions more on feelings and experience than on calculations.