Ferrari - Chris Dyer pays for the Abu Dhabi strategy

[vall]

As somebody already mentioned, in the post-brawn era they have made too many mistakes. Perhaps it was a time for change. May br for good

[nipo]

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.

Seg I got your point about you can't do everything with machines. That was NOT my point.

My point was (you didn't quote my whole post, go back to it), if you tell me that in this age of information technology teams are still going into races given a sheet of paper and a calculator and are expected to base their decisions entirely on experience, instinct, and guts, I'm not going to buy it. Driving simulation and CFD are WAY more complicated than just calculating how 24 cars would go around lap-by-lap from a bunch of profiles and predictions, so it should not be impossible to think of something clever on the software front. Again, that is NOT going to be the magic crystal ball that tells you what to do - it simply speeds up the decision making process by sparing you the time and energy to manually compute the various scenarios that could happen. It does not ensure the right decision every time - just like driving simulation needs to be backed up by track tests - but it will have reminded whoever made the decision about scenarios that the human mind might have left out. My point here is to say these scenarios weren't properly computed and presented in a timely and coherent fashion to the decision maker. Hence the call was made "in the heat" and "in a split second", and led to spectacular failure.

The fact is the team admitted afterwards that they were overlooking some aspects regarding to track position of other competitors. More specifically they were NOT making a bet that didn't pay off. They were making a bet on the black-jack table thinking they were playing poker (I don't gamble so excuse me if this is not a good analogy)! They thought they had to play the Webber game. Yes the soft tire degradation added to the complication, but in my opinion their primary focus, like CHT pointed out, should have shifted more on keeping up with Vettel (actually that should have been the point from the start of the race). If they believed most people were suffering from the same tyre problems, including Vettel, they should have stayed on track and let Vettel do the pit stop first so they can be sure the race would reset properly. They did not wait and was surprised the race didn't reset when Vettel and others stayed out. Yes, we are benefitting from hindsight, I'm aware, but I firmly believe that with better preparation the decision maker would have been in a better position to make a better call.

And if you read my post completely I explicitly questioned whether Dyer was to blame. You made it sound like I was one of Ferrari (not that I mind ) to point a finger at him. On the otherhand I firmly believe that some people in the pits were collectively to blame for this misjudgement, and the team as a whole should have been more professionally prepared for this important race.

[Miguel]

IMHO, Ferrari actually acted against Vettel... while considering Vettel and McLaren unbeatable in the race. Thus, the WDC depended on Alonso finishing fourth (not fifth). Someone very worried in the Ferrari box considered Rosberg and Petrov easier to overtake than Webber, and thought that if Webber ended in front of Alonso after the pit stop, the WDC was over.

With Massa ahead of Webber, suddenly Ferrari can more or less control Webber's place, and Alonso could have pitted only to react for the front runners or extreme degradation, instead of Webber and the early stoppers. This is why they pit Massa first, but they fail to get in front of Webber, even though Alguersuari took a while to let Webber by.

Now Ferrari sees Webber's purple middle sector, the worsening of the laptimes of the front runners and Bridgestone's "Tyres will not last 20 laps" prediction. With this data, they decide to pit Alonso, and the rest is history.

[747heavy]

+1 Miguel
I see it the same way (perhaps wrong)
When Webber pitted, Ferrari was forced to show it´s hand and react.
They tried to play the Massa card, but failed (did not get Massa in front of Webber), after this, they had to cover Webber.

As others said, it´s difficult (impossible) to cover two opponents with only one car.
At the time, based on probability, they saw Webber as the greater risk.
Sure, with 20/20 vision after the fact, it´s easy to cast blame, but I understand what they tried to do, and why they did it.
I don´t think, it is/was as stuppid as it looks (now).

At the moment,when they made the call, Webber was setting purple sector times on the prime tire, and everybody else struggled (more or less) on the option.
If they had waited longer, there was the very real risk, that they would loose a position to Webber, so the first aim was to stay in front of Webber.
They managed this, but then Alonso could not progress futher up the order, when it became obvious, that Vettel was going to win the race.

Now, they are the laughing stock, but if Hamilton had beat Vettel or Vettel blow an engine or tire, things would have not looked too shaby.
Sometimes it´s a very fine line, between "Hero" and "Zero".

Yes, in retrospect, it was perhaps the wrong call, but it was not totally stupid - IMHO.
These things happen - it´s racing after all.

You can see, that in Lap 14 Webber gained ~1s (0.8sec) towards Alonso, and at that time Ferrari, made the call, because if Webber would continue to gain at this rate, they would have had a cross over with Webber within 1-2laps.

[internetf1fan]

Well perhaps Alonso should have passed Petrov... and before you say Hamilton couldn't pass Kubica, Petrov is a pay driver while Kubica is widely regarded as one of the top drivers in the grid.

[Goran2812]

wow... really? passing that renault was soooo easy,we all saw that... the fact that petrov had a much faster car in that straight and drove his little russian heart out till the end of the race makes things a little bit complicated for the guy behind, no matter who he was... even the ferrari pitwall underestimated petrov, so he bitch slapped them till the end of the race...

[segedunum]

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

That's it in a succinct nutshell.

The wheels really came off when Jean Todt left after 2007. I didn't care much for how Domenicali directed that team in 2008 or at any time afterwards. They've been on a decline ever since as the Todt/Brawn/Byrne/Schumacher effect has worn off.

Now they're trying to pin the blame for a failure on one person, whether they say so or not, when the seeds had been sown many months earlier. It's like planting rubbish seeds and then blaming the gardener.

[donskar]

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

That's it in a succinct nutshell.

The wheels really came off when Jean Todt left after 2007. I didn't care much for how Domenicali directed that team in 2008 or at any time afterwards. They've been on a decline ever since as the Todt/Brawn/Byrne/Schumacher effect has worn off.

Now they're trying to pin the blame for a failure on one person, whether they say so or not, when the seeds had been sown many months earlier. It's like planting rubbish seeds and then blaming the gardener.

segedunum, I'm really bemused by your repetition of the "wheels coming off." Do you really think that Ferrari has been a catastrophe

since Jean Todt left after 2007

? And should the current team be castigated for not being as good as

Todt/Brawn/Byrne/Schumacher

? What other team has been as good?

Be careful -- Ferrari might go out and buy Newey and then we'll be in for several seasons of a red parade.

[Giblet]

Ferrari tried to outright buy Newey, but he just recently said no. Maybe a reported 8 million a year on a championship team he has helped build to what it is is enough for him.

During the Ross Brawn/Schumacher era, they had some of the best reliability ever. When Schumacher's engine exploded ending his 2006 campaign was one of the first in ages.

Then once the team dissolved, we had Ferrari engines corking often, pit light problems, fuel hoses being dragged away. Even though Ferrari have still enjoyed much success since then, compared to before, I would say the wheels have come off.

They seem to be getting better for the most part, reliability wise anyways.

[sasquatch]

Shame to hear Chris Dyer is getting pushed around by Ferrari. I met him a few times while working there and he was one the few nice guys there.

[segedunum]

Be careful -- Ferrari might go out and buy Newey and then we'll be in for several seasons of a red parade.

Not a chance. Newey spent twenty odd years to get himself into a team that he could make in his own image and where the engineering department thought and worked in the way that he did and where he didn't have people like Patrick Head going all conservative on him. He's had to put up with too much ego jealousy.

The last driver's championship was won under Todt in 2007 when Byrne, Schumacher and Brawn had left and the last constructors' in 2008 and that was only won because they had two drivers who were both getting podiums. I'm still suspicious about what prompted that whole incident with Nigel Stepney as well.

The only thing propping Ferrari up at the moment is Chief Designer Nikolas Tombazis.

[donskar]

Be careful -- Ferrari might go out and buy Newey and then we'll be in for several seasons of a red parade.

Not a chance. Newey spent twenty odd years to get himself into a team that he could make in his own image and where the engineering department thought and worked in the way that he did and where he didn't have people like Patrick Head going all conservative on him. He's had to put up with too much ego jealousy.

The last driver's championship was won under Todt in 2007 when Byrne, Schumacher and Brawn had left and the last constructors' in 2008 and that was only won because they had two drivers who were both getting podiums. I'm still suspicious about what prompted that whole incident with Nigel Stepney as well.

The only thing propping Ferrari up at the moment is Chief Designer Nikolas Tombazis.

I am less pessimistic. I think Pat Fry helped a bit last year and will do more this season. (I do not know anything about the new guy from Red Bull, but he should help.) Tombazis? Good resume, but you and I both know that no one man can prop up a top-level team.

[segedunum]

...and in another example as to how they've knee-jerked and haven't understood what happened they've poached Vettel's strategist.

[andrew]

It looks like most (if not all) of the sensible high-ups in the F1 team have left. Ferrari have now fully returned to idiotic knee-jerk decisions made with the heart ruling the head that was common pre-1996. Saw this coming as soon as they signed Alonso and I wouldn't be surprised if Ferrari shortly announce Briatore as a new team member (I guess that would be a lot of bad eggs in one red basket).

Surely the way to learn from a mistake is to look thoroughly at what happened, learn from it and move on but keep stability in the team. It looks like Dyer has well and truely been made a scapegoat and the knee-jerk reaction has been made of replacing him.

To my mind, a key question has yet to be answered - why could Alonso, an experienced driver and twice WDC, could not outwit a rookie in a slower car at a track where passing is possible. Dominicelli has always struck me as a bit of a gutless wonder (thus why the point has not really been raised I guess) who is more concerned about accusing other teams of having illeagal cars during the season and PR than efficent team management (using Jean Todt and Ross Brawn as examples of excellent team managers).

[donskar]

OK, this has descended into another irrational Ferrari-haters festival. I'm done.