Alonso expects improvements at Ferrari

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Fernando Alonso is confident Ferrari’s performance will improve in the coming races as the team bring a series of updates to their F10.

Alonso said:

The next round is in Valencia in my home country. It will be nice to race in front of my fans and I would like to get on the podium again, given that Valencia is another circuit where I have never done so.

We will have major updates on the F10 which I hope will allow us to up our performance level. Following on from that, we have further developments in the pipeline which should arrive for England and Germany: which is to say that the European Grand Prix is simply the ninth round of the championship, not a last ditch effort for Ferrari, which I heard some people saying.

I don’t see how they can say that given that we have not even reached the halfway point of the season and that after Valencia there will still be ten Grands Prix to go. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now, this is a stage event and the final one of those stages will not come until November in Abu Dhabi.
Fernando Alonso

Alonso believes his difficult race in Turkey two weeks ago was a blip and the F10 is capable of fighting for the championship:

We were back to where we have been in practically all the other races, the one exception being Turkey, where for various reasons, everything about the Grand Prix went wrong, from every point of view. The normal situation is the one we have seen in Montreal, Monaco, Melbourne and Sakhir and all the other tracks where we fought for a podium finish. Maybe the results did not always match our potential, but I think the same can be said for all the top teams.
Fernando Alonso

Although he was clearly disappointed after the race to have missed out on a win at the Montreal circuit, he said third place was as good as the team expected to achieve before the weekend:

A couple of days on from the race, the sense of disappointment that we missed out on a win that was within our grasp has been replaced with the awareness that we did actually get a great result. We have to look at it as a glass half full because, on the Thursday we would have been satisfied with the thought of a podium finish.

The Montreal race was very spectacular and incident packed, not just because of the nature of the track, but also because of the different strategies chosen by the teams, as a function of the tyre performance. I think the spectators at the track and those watching on television really enjoyed it, but I can assure you that for the drivers and the teams, it was a difficult and stressful weekend, because it was never really clear how the tyres would react in the various situations that arose.
Fernando Alonso

Read more: Alonso blames traffic for losing first and second places

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Keith Collantine
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18 comments on “Alonso expects improvements at Ferrari”

  1. Keep your chin up Nando!!

  2. If Alonso can fight back 2006 like (after losing the mass damper) he will have a solid go at winning the WDC this year.
    But i expect him to be close behind and going for it next year with a Ferrari team better organized to manage the improvements brought to race.
    It seems something McLaren is real good at and Renauld does an impressive job with it (after being in the dark with their car last year).

  3. if you recall Alonso and Ferrari have been competitive in each race exept Turkey. But some races like Monaco and Canada they could have done far better, given how competitive the car was.

  4. CovertGiblets
    16th June 2010, 12:11

    I agree with BasCB. If Ferrari are going to be contenders now and in future years, they need to be better organised. However, I can’t see any signs of that happening and with their current structure/personnel they will, I believe, continue to struggle. I can see a gentle decline in Ferrari’s fortunes in the coming years.

    I honestly think Dolmio boy… sorry Fernando has made a mistake going to Ferrari. I don’t believe he’ll win anything.

    However… I’ve been wrong before!

    1. I think the rules of the game have changed ( for the better ) and now the competitiveness of a team depends on smart enginers coordinating sophisticated computer work.
      Before it used to be a question of money and politics. If Ferrari was not fast enough, Lou would just get on the phone and fix it.
      I agree with Giblets about a gentle decline.

      For this new era of competitive racing in a more democratic way, we have to thank the vision of Uncle Max.

      I still think that Fast Fred will win a couple of WDC with Ferrari before retiring to racing NASCAR and the new Can-Am in the States.

  5. 7 tenths! That is what ferrari are claiming from this update, of which an integral part is a blown diffuser but there are other aspects to it, 7 tenths :O I hope they’re wrong ;)

    1. I hope they’re wrong, too. 9 tenths is what I’m hoping for ;)

    2. Even if Ferrari find 0,7 seconds, they still fight an uphil battle. Red Bull will improve in the next races, maybe another 3-5 tenths by Silverstone. McLaren will bring something to Valencia (about 1-2 tenths) and about 3-5 tenths to Silverstone.

      So even if it would work with 7tenth improvement, Ferrari can be in front in Valencia, but would be about level with McLaren and Red Bull in Silverstone.

      More likely they improve 3-5 tenth in Valencia and maybe 1 tenth in Silverstone, with McLaren doing the same but the other way around and Red Bull keeping with them as well. It would not be enough.

  6. The testing ban is actually pointless, if they cant test their current cars they just use the old cars and get bugger all out of it, apart from driver developement.

    http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/84531

    Another example is the renault f1 roadshow, they are still incurring the costs of driving but getting noithing 0ut of it. The testing ban realy should end at the end of this season.

    1. They get sponsor-appeal from those shows, as they generate lots of media attention.

    2. But Renault (and Red Bull) do those shows for publicity and getting most out of their F1 investments.

      Those programs have been run by teams paralell to testing in the past, not as a replacement.

  7. I cant help but feel like Ferrari are chasing shadows again here with the blown diffuser upgrade. They saw McLaren’s blown wing and thought that adopting it for themselves would catapult them to the front. Instead it ended up detracting greatly from other areas of car development, and they might have been better off without it. Now I fear they are doing the same thing with red bull’s exhaust-driven diffuser, thinking that integrating that single concept will make a huge performance difference. Meanwhile McLaren and Renault have made huge strides from smaller, incremental upgrades. Ferrari started out with possibly the fastest car (on race pace at least) this year, and if they had taken a more holistic approach to developing their car, that might still be the case today.

    1. I agree with you. Ferrari doesn’t have their own development philosophy. They looked at the f-duct, the exhaust driven diffuser, as well as Toyota’s super diffuser, and decided to mimic those parts onto the Ferrari.

      I’m sure these largely researched innovations are deeply embedded into each Car’s design philosphy, and Ferrari need to just put the upgrades that they had planned at the beginning of the season.

    2. It seems Alonso thinks the same.

    3. In fact, it seems like Ferrari even noticed McLaren’s success with Lewis Hamilton and recently said to themselves “We should get one of those too!” and thus proceeded to sign 11 year old Karting star Lance Stroll to their driver development program ;)

      1. Thought I read he was nine not eleven?

      2. i’m waiting for their laser update – that should stake care of those HRTs

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