2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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Phil
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Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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I was going to compose a lengthy post on the subject. Indeed, there is a crisis brewing. At the very least, as a sum, the team Ferrari has failed to epic proportions.

Merely 6 weeks ago, the Vettel/Ferrari took a dominant victory at Spa. They had the best car and despite not leading the championship through some costly mistakes, one wouldn't have put it past the Scuderia to make up the deficit of 17 points after Spa.

On one hand, if they had made use of a battery-trick that gave them the edge over Mercedes, one can not blame it entirely on the team for no longer being able to use it (the 2nd sensor topic). One should applaud Ferrari of getting to the point that they did actually have the fastest car on track. But it's also a point that through many mistakes, the team has underperformed at races it should have won.

Here are a few points:

- Baku / Vettel lost his position from 2nd to 3rd after the safety car restart (-13 points)
- Austria / no team-orders that allowed Kimi to finish ahead of Vettel in a race Hamilton DNFed (-3 points)
- Hockenheim / Vettel being held up by Kimi despite being on different strategies
- Hockenheim / Vettel's crash (-32 points)
- Hungary / weather played a decisive role in QF giving Mercedes the upper hand to steal the race victory (-14 points)
- Monza / lack of a team strategy / Vettel being too impatient at the start vs Kimi that compromised him against Hamilton who then won the race (-23 points)
- Monza / team strategy failed Kimi by having him to push for too long on the softs despite already being ahead of Hamilton who pitted later
- Singapore / Vettels costly crash during practice
- Suzuka / Ferrari putting their cars on the wrong tire in Q3, then both drivers made costly mistakes while under pressure (-7 points)
- Suzuka / Vettel pretty much made up for his bad starting position, but threw it away by perhaps being too ambitious and impatient vs Verstappen


This is not to bash Vettel mind you. I think his performances and mistakes need to be looked at, in the proper context. Why did Vettel push that hard? Why was he battling Kimi so hard on the first 4 corners at Monza? Why does he feel he needs to over deliver and over drive the car? Is it his sole doing or are the reasons deeper in how Ferrari have managed the team this year? Have they failed to give Vettel the support required to perform at his best?

E.g. I was watching the onboard of Hockenheim that was posted in the racing thread and it did baffle me to see how long Kimi was holding up Vettel once both had pitted and they were both on differing strategies. Vettel was on the radio multiple times, saying that it was getting silly and that he was losing temperatures following Kimi. He then came on the radio again to ask "do you see the temperatures, do you see them?" until finally they ordered Kimi to make room for Vettel. Seeing this, one really wonders what has been going on behind the scenes at Ferrari to the point the driver who was leading this years championship in the then dominant car of the season wasn't being given the support he should have gotten. Later in that race, he then crashed the car.

There other instances of moments of disbelief, i.e. at Monza when Vettel was racing his team-mate into the T1 and T3. Why? It just didn't make sense. Mercedes have masterfully demonstrated how you can effectively start the race to retain both positions. I am dumbstruck that Ferrari didn't come up with some sort of plan in their morning briefing of saying "guys, don't race each other from the start. Survive the first laps in the positions you are in, then you are free to race" or something to that effect. By Vettel being too aggressive on his team-mate, he compromised his own position to Hamilton.

Then there is also the point that Kimi has been let go and Charles Leclerc has been signed for 2019. Surely this isn't to Vettels liking. It can not be.

In my humble opinion, not all is well with Vettel and Ferrari. Perhaps on some level, the team are losing faith in his ability to get the results they deem they should be scoring and this has led to friction and more pressure which have negatively impacted how Vettel has performed on the track. Where from here? This season is all but lost and I wonder how the relationship between Vettel and Ferrari continue into next year. There's also talk that Arrivabene's position is shaky, given it expires at the end of the year. Others seem to talk of a power struggle between him and Binoto.

Interesting times ahead for Ferrari.
Not for nothing, Rosberg's Championship is the only thing that lends credibility to Hamilton's recent success. Otherwise, he'd just be the guy who's had the best car. — bhall II
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digitalrurouni
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Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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I agree with most of what you are saying but I have a feeling in Monza the Mercedes cars would have beat Ferrari even if Vettel didn't mess up and spin.

marmer
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Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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Yeah defending in Monza is much harder than other tracks so would be much tougher to stop Hamilton overtaking vet as he did

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siskue2005
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Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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Phil wrote:
09 Oct 2018, 18:33
- Hungary / weather played a decisive role in QF giving Mercedes the upper hand to steal the race victory (-14 points)
F1 is an all weather sport, it is not like cricket or indy car oval race.
So adapting to all conditions is part of the sport (both cars and drivers).

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siskue2005
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Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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Someone on reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comme ... efore_the/
put the results of amus fantastic power rankings into a proper table format:

Image

The table also shows how critically important "The Boost" has been for Ferrari's competitiveness, with the first iteration showing on the GPS from BAH until AZE, the second iteration from AUT until ITA.

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WaikeCU
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Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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GPR -A wrote:
09 Oct 2018, 18:12
WaikeCU wrote:
09 Oct 2018, 13:46
munudeges wrote:
09 Oct 2018, 13:30
I also happen to think that they are missing James Allison. You can't design and direct Formula 1 cars by committee and Allison was forced out by the usual Maranello politics. They took Allison's work and ran with it, passing it off as their own, and it is now catching up with them. Binotto is simply not a Technical Director.
All the while, Allison’s influence is kicking in at the already dominating Merc.
Are we saying that, in an organization of 700+ people, containing low level engineers to highly skilled Design Architects, at various departments, would be influenced by one individual's presence at a level almost they never really interact with? Especially, when they already have Aero and Mechnical design chiefs like Mike Elliott, Geoff Willis and Aldo Costa? A leader sitting at such a high level as Allison, hardly does anything at the fundamental design of the car except for taking presentations and providing approvals. It's people at the lower to mid level hands on folks who actually design and build the cars.

SF70H and SF71H are indigenous work of the staff at Maranello and not by Allison. He might have contributed at very high level, but nothing really that you can attribute to him. It's actually strange that SF71H has tailed off so suddenly. May be there was a false dawn after Spa and the confidence that the SF71H is ahead of W09, the focus might have shifted to next year's car.
By influence I mean he’s probably not the designer of the car, but I think the engineers and designers who design the car and updates will have to present their designs, calculations and simulated data to men such as Willis, Elliott and Costa mainly, But I assume Allison attends these presentations as well to have an understanding of the status on a season’s project, an overview guarded by his presence. He knows what’s in the pipeline of updates for their car and he expects the updates to be on the car or shipped before the weekend starts. I assume he also has the final word on when the updates will be on the cars and if needed has the final word on workarounds to temporary limit issues. He also gets the necessary feedback of the drivers on issues that need to be solved and knows when the issues will be solved through which updates that will be on the car at Grand Prix X. He knows the roadmap for 2018-2019. Like I said, he knows the status or lifeform of the car this season. I assume at the end of the season he’ll have to do a presentation about the W09 when it all started and talk about the hiccups, the issues, how they solved it and what results it delivered throughout the season.

noname
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Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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GPR -A wrote:
09 Oct 2018, 18:12
Are we saying that, in an organization of 700+ people, containing low level engineers to highly skilled Design Architects, at various departments, would be influenced by one individual's presence at a level almost they never really interact with?
Allison was fundamental to changing Ferrari's Engineering Department culture. In huge parts thanks to him people were allowed to focus on the future.
Before it was constant firefighting and running in circles, plans going rarely more than couple of weeks ahead, almost no strategy. He changed this, guys were allowed to really focus on stuff they have to deliver in 2, 3, 6 months (or even further ahead). I dare to say arrival of long term vision, together with associated strategy and plans, was key ingredient allowing Ferrari to return to the front of the pack. Ferrari became pro-active, rather then re-active.

This kind of approach is something Brown named as one of the reason behind successes of organisations he was in charge of (in "Total competition").

GoranF1
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Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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Ferrari fans have started a petition to bring back Alonso to Ferrari, which they intend to send Arrivabene.
"I have no idols. I admire work, dedication & competence."

LM10
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Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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GoranF1 wrote:
10 Oct 2018, 19:57
Ferrari fans have started a petition to bring back Alonso to Ferrari, which they intend to send Arrivabene.
That’s cute. :lol: This would not affect anything even a bit.

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F1NAC
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Joined: 31 Mar 2013, 22:35

Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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noname wrote:
10 Oct 2018, 12:37
GPR -A wrote:
09 Oct 2018, 18:12
Are we saying that, in an organization of 700+ people, containing low level engineers to highly skilled Design Architects, at various departments, would be influenced by one individual's presence at a level almost they never really interact with?
Allison was fundamental to changing Ferrari's Engineering Department culture. In huge parts thanks to him people were allowed to focus on the future.
Before it was constant firefighting and running in circles, plans going rarely more than couple of weeks ahead, almost no strategy. He changed this, guys were allowed to really focus on stuff they have to deliver in 2, 3, 6 months (or even further ahead). I dare to say arrival of long term vision, together with associated strategy and plans, was key ingredient allowing Ferrari to return to the front of the pack. Ferrari became pro-active, rather then re-active.

This kind of approach is something Brown named as one of the reason behind successes of organisations he was in charge of (in "Total competition").
I think it has more to do with Binotto managing things than Allison..

Just look how he transformed engine department while he was there.

noname
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Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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F1NAC wrote:
11 Oct 2018, 09:01
I think it has more to do with Binotto managing things than Allison..

Just look how he transformed engine department while he was there.
Transformation started long before Binotto came there. You could feel and see things are changing once James arrived. Working with them got much better.

digitalrurouni
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Joined: 26 Feb 2016, 18:50

Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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siskue2005 wrote:
09 Oct 2018, 23:57
Someone on reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comme ... efore_the/
put the results of amus fantastic power rankings into a proper table format:

https://i.redd.it/f3p7utfslsq11.png

The table also shows how critically important "The Boost" has been for Ferrari's competitiveness, with the first iteration showing on the GPS from BAH until AZE, the second iteration from AUT until ITA.

That's pretty cool. But am I to interpret that the higher score on the Ferrari indicates that the car is still better than what Mercedes has to offer?

digitalrurouni
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Joined: 26 Feb 2016, 18:50

Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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GoranF1 wrote:
10 Oct 2018, 19:57
Ferrari fans have started a petition to bring back Alonso to Ferrari, which they intend to send Arrivabene.
You know I would sign that in a heartbeat. I really respect Fernando for the ferocity and the passion he still brings to each of his races though he has had a shite car forever now it seems. Sure he has his low moments on the radio but seriously he can't be blamed.

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siskue2005
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Joined: 11 May 2007, 21:50

Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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digitalrurouni wrote:
11 Oct 2018, 14:19
siskue2005 wrote:
09 Oct 2018, 23:57
Someone on reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comme ... efore_the/
put the results of amus fantastic power rankings into a proper table format:

https://i.redd.it/f3p7utfslsq11.png

The table also shows how critically important "The Boost" has been for Ferrari's competitiveness, with the first iteration showing on the GPS from BAH until AZE, the second iteration from AUT until ITA.

That's pretty cool. But am I to interpret that the higher score on the Ferrari indicates that the car is still better than what Mercedes has to offer?
it is an overall score for the entire season, not any current rating but throughout the season is what it means

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F1NAC
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Re: 2018 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

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noname wrote:
11 Oct 2018, 13:45
F1NAC wrote:
11 Oct 2018, 09:01
I think it has more to do with Binotto managing things than Allison..

Just look how he transformed engine department while he was there.
Transformation started long before Binotto came there. You could feel and see things are changing once James arrived. Working with them got much better.
it was a mess during 2016(car wasn't significantly better than SF15T,and sf16H was done under JA supervision. )... I wouldn't say that it was James who did something significantly. With his wife dying from cancer in April2016, he couldn't have done much more for 2017 car.

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