Ferrari - Chris Dyer pays for the Abu Dhabi strategy

[Richard]

Seg - I agree about the race tactics and add that Vettel and Hamilton had nothing to lose by staying out, they both needed to stay ahead of Kubica to win, so they had to shadow him for as long as possible.

Thinking about it now, Webber, Vettel, Hamilton had to go for broke due to track position. Alonso was the only one faced with a choice. He (and his team) were so focussed on Vettel v Webber that they didn't pay enough attention to the two Renaults.

There is a good write up about it here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Abu_D ... _Prix#Race

Back to topic, for all we know, a change of role for Dyer may have been in the pipeline before Abu Dhabi. It is easy for journalists to see a change and then post-rationalise it as some great conspiracy or scapegoat.

[myurr]

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

I didn't attach any blame to Alonso or to anyone else in Ferrari. It seems that others are the ones that hunting around for someone to blame.

It was a bad strategy call... they happen. It's stupid that in a team like Ferrari people are trying to attach blame to any one person when there would have been many people all supplying possibly conflicting information. F1 one is in part about managing risk and finding the correct compromise. Too conservative and you won't score enough points as other peoples gambles will work out for them and they'll finish ahead of you. Too aggressive and you fail to finish as something goes wrong.

In Abu Dhabi, for instance, the teams didn't expect it to be so difficult to pass other cars especially with that long straight. Had Webber been able to make it past the other cars then it may well have been the right strategy. As it turns out tyre degradation was much less than expected (remember Bridgestone saying before the race that it could be another Canada?) and it was much more difficult to pass the cars in front than expected.

[myurr]

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.

Don't want to split the refuelling debate into two threads, but in some ways refuelling actually makes the races themselves less complicated as your strategy is pretty much fixed on Saturday. At least without refuelling you're free to react and adjust your strategy in the race without a weight penalty.

[CHT]

These are permutations for Alonso going into the race, and I would expect this list will be on the desk of every Ferrari race strategists at Abu Dhabi and Maranello.

Alonso can become champion if
1) He wins the race or finishes second
2) He finishes third and Webber doesn’t win
3) He finishes fourth and Webber doesn’t win
4) He finishes fifth and Webber doesn’t win
5) He finishes sixth and Webber doesn’t finish in the top 2 or Vettel doesn’t win
6) He finishes seventh and Webber doesn’t finish on the podium or Vettel doesn’t win
7) He finishes eight and Webber doesn’t finish on the podim or Vettel doesn’t win
8 He finishes ninth and Webber doesn’t finish in the top 4 or Vettel doesn’t finish in the top 2
9) He finishes tenth and Webber doesn’t finish in the top 5 or Vettel doesn’t finish in the top 2

Webber pitted from 5th on lap 11 when Alonso was running 4th. By then it should be pretty clear that Ferrari was left with option 2,3 and 4, as the rest of the permuations are no long within their control (Vettel was leading and Alonso is not in position to win a "normal race")

By then, I would expect Ferrari to be focusing on Alonso finishing fifth and above instead of focusing on Webber only

[segedunum]

It's not that simple. They had to decide what they were going to do with the option (soft) tyre, and where they were going to change it. If Ferrari had kept Alonso out and they had gone off as everyone including Alonso had expected, costing him a hatful of time and putting him behind other cars, Ferrari would have been similarly accused of being stupid.

That list is utterly meaningless because they had to do something about his soft tyres otherwise he'd never finish in any of those positions.

They had to take the safety first option in their circumstances. They could have pitted when others did under the safety car but Alonso, and Webber, Vettel and Hamilton for that matter, would have expected to be fast enough to remain far enough ahead to pit and stay out ahead. Pitting early would have yielded a similar disaster had they got bogged down amongst other cars and they would have had no option to jump anyone in the pits had they done so.

Typical. People want more variables and uncertainty to increase excitement and when we get them people start bitching and people get fired.

[segedunum]

Back to topic, for all we know, a change of role for Dyer may have been in the pipeline before Abu Dhabi. It is easy for journalists to see a change and then post-rationalise it as some great conspiracy or scapegoat.

Could be, but it's not likely. The correllation matches up, that's all there is to it.

Dyer will almost certainly leave now.

[myurr]

It's not that simple. They had to decide what they were going to do with the option (soft) tyre, and where they were going to change it. If Ferrari had kept Alonso out and they had gone off as everyone including Alonso had expected, costing him a hatful of time and putting him behind other cars, Ferrari would have been similarly accused of being stupid.

That list is utterly meaningless because they had to do something about his soft tyres otherwise he'd never finish in any of those positions.

They had to take the safety first option in their circumstances. They could have pitted when others did under the safety car but Alonso, and Webber, Vettel and Hamilton for that matter, would have expected to be fast enough to remain far enough ahead to pit and stay out ahead. Pitting early would have yielded a similar disaster had they got bogged down amongst other cars and they would have had no option to jump anyone in the pits had they done so.

Typical. People want more variables and uncertainty to increase excitement and when we get them people start bitching and people get fired.

Completely agree. My memory may be utterly wrong but wasn't Alonso even on the radio before his first stop saying tyre degradation was bad? The team made a judgement call based on all the information they had, played what they thought was the safest option, but got it wrong.

It was the same for Hamilton in 08 in Brazil. The team played that entire race safe, not taking any risks, just making sure they came home with at least the minimum result Hamilton needed. When it started raining they still played it safe and came in. It was the right thing to do but because the Toyota's gambled on not coming in they nearly lost the championship. It would have been ridiculous for McLaren to have taken a similar gamble but had it worked for Toyota everyone would have been saying that McLaren made a really bad call.

As segedunum says this is part of racing, and sometimes teams and drivers get it spectacularly right and win and other times they get it spectacularly wrong and people say they can't believe how stupid they are.

[Giblet]

To be fair to Dyer, I would have assumed that Petrov would have choked, or at least been passed able to be passed by Alonso.

He was the (pleasant) surprise of the race there.

[marcush.]

Playing save and trying to be too clever is not yielding championships .at the end of the day you need to try and grab the best possible result in every race and not drive
relative to your competitors..too many factors you cannot control.
thats about it.
alonso had a car that was good enough for a top 4 result and they "managed" him to 7th ...but Redbull was even worse with Webber....
All the teams have really shown considerable weaknesses in strategy in 2010 ..to ask a driver to attack when overtaking is forbidden is a good example of UEBERSTRATEGIST´s fall from grace ...you just need to know the rules.If there is a loophole you need to clarify before and not poker.

[paipa]

To be fair to Dyer, I would have assumed that Petrov would have choked, or at least been passed able to be passed by Alonso.

He was the (pleasant) surprise of the race there.

Do the teams have access to the GPS data of all the cars? Petrov's straight line speed advantage was apparent when he had to defend against Alonso but weren't Ferrari aware of this beforehand?

How could they just trust Alonso deal with him quickly? Don't forget that Rosberg seemed an even harder obstacle, still with a higher speed trap figure than Alonso. It's not like overtaking Petrov would have been enough.

[A_S_V]

Back to topic, for all we know, a change of role for Dyer may have been in the pipeline before Abu Dhabi. It is easy for journalists to see a change and then post-rationalise it as some great conspiracy or scapegoat.

Could be, but it's not likely. The correllation matches up, that's all there is to it.

Dyer will almost certainly leave now.

I hope then he joins Michael and Brawn at Mercedes.

[GTO]

Someone had to take the fall from the pit wall. It could have been Domenicalli. This was not only this race that demonstrated poor Ferrari race strategy, but due to this race determining the WDC, it highlighted the weakness in the team.
With regards to Neil Martin, what the heck is the new Operations Research department at Ferrari? Has anyone heard of such a department & its function?

[Goran2812]

ferrari made to many mistakes to many times,not just this season... hope they can put their act together... -.-

[Giblet]

Like the media said, one Ross Brawn and co left, they just reverted to being Italian.

[donskar]

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.

"The wheels have started to come off" is a little harsh. Second place in the WDC is not a disaster.

Dyer's role will be "redefined." So he is probably gone. But Ferrari adds a tech guy from Red Bull. And replaces Dyer with a top guy from McLaren. I don't see this as a big deal and it is no loss to Ferrari. One thing is certain: NO ONE can be comfortable trying to replace Ross Brawn as Ferrari strategist.