F2012 “still needs polishing” say Ferrari

F1 Fanatic round-up

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Fernando Alonso, Ferrari, Jerez, 2012

In the round-up: Ferrari urge calm over the early performance of their F2012.

Links

Calm and concentrated (Ferrari)

“There was no reason to bandy about predictions of catastrophe which was the case up to Thursday evening, nor was there any cause for elation after [Fernando Alonso] set the fastest time yesterday morning.”

Bruno ready to script a different Senna story (Deccan Chronicle)

“Many people ask me about how my family felt about my coming to Williams and everything. Everybody is super happy. My grandfather (Ayrton’s father), everybody because everybody has been working so hard for this to happen.”

Force India: Lots to do in Barcelona (Sky)

Nico Hulkenberg: “There is still a massive amount to learn and lots of data to look at, but it feels like we have a good baseline to develop from and I’m pleased with how the day went.”

Nigel Mansell via Twitter

“F1 testing in Spain looks like a number of teams holding back. You never want to show your hand, it makes the other teams flag something and then work harder. There are always teams that will never complete a very quick lap, but they know and the good teams watching will know. Next test they will all show their hand a little more.”

Van der Garde: Next test will be better (Autosport)

“The car is running very well and I think there is a lot of potential. For me to get used to the peak of the new tyres and the braking was a big deal, but the next test will be better.”

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Comment of the day

"I say old chum, I seem to have misplaced my pipe."

We had another great set of suggestions in yesterday’s Caption Competition.

Among the best were those from Legnig, Sw6569, AlexF1Man, MahavirShah and Richard Hughes.

But my favourite was the quick-off-the-mark suggestion from Ajokay which you can see on the image here – he narrowly pipped Dan Thorn to the punchline…

From the forum

Happy birthday!

No F1 Fanatic birthdays today. If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is by emailling me, using Twitter or adding to the list here.

On this day in F1

Whatever you think of the modern limits on testing, at least these days when the teams test, they all assemble at the same venue.

On this day ten years ago Ferrari had Michael Schumacher testing at Fiorano and Rubens Barrichello at Mugello. On top of that McLaren and Jaguar were in Valencia and four other teams were testing in Barcelona.

Images © Ferrari spa/Ercole Colombo, Motioncompany

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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45 comments on “F2012 “still needs polishing” say Ferrari”

  1. That’s a great caption, @ajokay. Really laughed at that one!

    1. I didn’t even bother trying to come up with one after I saw it, I knew it was a winner!

      1. I only wrote mine because I hadn’t seen his caption.

        1. I guess its all a matter of opinion

          for me @legnig ‘s comment is way better…it really matches the look on their faces

    2. Yeah, good one from @ajokay. I participated too late.

  2. I have to say I have the utmost respect for the way Bruno handles questions about his uncle. He never seems frustrated with living in his shadow and is always happy to talk about it openly with the press.

    1. In the nicest possible way – his uncle is the only thing that distinguishes Senna from a group of perfectly good but not spectacular drivers who are there and thereabouts in F1 but haven’t (yet) made a big name for themselves. Grosjean, Petrov, Maldonaldo, vd Garde, Ambrosio, Razia, Pic, Ricciardo, di Grassi, Chandhok, possibly Hulkenberg.

      He knows that his family name gives him an edge with teams and sponsors, and if he refused to ever mention ‘Uncle Ayrton’ they’d find someone else to talk about.

  3. F2012 “still needs polishing” say Ferrari

    It’s needs more than polish to make the F2012 a looker!

    1. I hope they don’t mean the F2012 needs a Polish (Kubica)!

      1. Nice one Fixy!

      2. @fixy comment of the century

        1. Thank you @d3v0 and il_Leone_22!

      3. @fixy
        10 internets to you.

  4. Wow, Ferrari had BOTH drivers testing on different tracks in 2002!!
    No wonder they dominated 2002 like anything..

  5. I agree with Nigel Mansell’s tweet. No team (including HRT if they had a car) would want to show their entire performance capability so early into the season. Although all the teams would know what’s happening with the other teams but they’re clearly not ready to tell us yet :) !

    1. While I understand the sentiment of not wanting to show your hand too early in the game, I doubt that any team dealing with a big departure from last year’s car, like Ferrari, even themselves know yet what they have on the their hands. I believe them when they say they have much analysis of the data to do and more testing needed to understand the car much more. And is any team ever done ‘polishing’ their cars? To stop trying to advance the car all the way from pre-season testing to the last race of the season is to stand still and let the competition blow past.

      As I say, I understand what Mansell is saying but I question whether that is what we saw last week. With the lack of pre-season and in-season testing nowadays there’s not a lot of track time to be ‘faking it’ imho, and especially for the first test session I would think it has never been more crucial to get out there and find out what you have. And of course other teams are watching all the time and if they see/hear something unique and different on another team’s car they will always be paying attention, fast laps or not. But that doesn’t mean they can just go a different direction in short order and change something up and expect it to work for them. So I think there might be a little bit of truth to what Mansell is saying but there is less ‘holding back’ than ever due to the lack of track time to be doing that.

    2. That’s sad for our anxiety, but perfectly comprehensible fro teams perspective.

      The only way to turn it around is installing incentives like: 300 k EUR for the fastest lap of the day, but I don’t see it coming any time soon.

      1. But…it’s testing…does it need ‘turning around’? I would expect that the top teams would not consider the prize you suggest worth it if they threw out their itinerary and risked discovering as much as they could about their new car(s) for the sake of a fast lap that would have nothing to do with sustainable, useable info for the coming season. Of course they would have to throw out the times of the teams using last year’s cars. And the lesser teams that will likely never post a fastest lap all season, would be at a disadvantage, although I guess if there is ever a time they might post a fastest lap it would be when the other teams aren’t trying, and are just trying to follow a set plan of data compilation.

  6. That’s my worry with van der Garde: his learning curve. That’s been an issue throughout his career, he drove decent enough, but never blimingly fast out of the box. With that in mind, I really think he made the right choice to go for a test deal.

  7. everybody has been working so hard for this to happen.

    Translation: Everybody paid a lot of money for this to happen.

    1. “Translation: Everybody paid a lot of money for this to happen.”

      Translation of your translation: no one in brunos family paid money for him to be in f1 this year.

  8. I still want someone to point out how Pedro has joined Hormoine Replacement Therapy

    1. Someone posted a caption suggesting this on the 1st page of the caption competition

      1. That might have been me.

    2. Don’t worry, we all pointed that out last year. Or was it the year before?

  9. Good caption indeed, nice to see a witty departure from F1.

    I must say, i’m glad that the term ‘sandbagging’ hasn’t been thrown around much yet, but I attribute that to most people geting over-excited about Raikkonen and trying to figure out what’s apparently going wrong with the F2012.

    1. my personal hated testing term is “glory run” :P

  10. When I read that that F2012 “still needs polishing” it made me think Codemasters were having trouble incorporating Ferrari’s step-nose into the next revision of their game, it’s that hideous.
    I imagine that only the hardiest Massa and Alonso fans will want to use the Ferrari in the game because there seem to be few who want to look at it otherwise.

    1. Wouldn’t more people use it then? You won’t see it so much if you’re driving it!

    2. I think the caterham probably the virgin (i’m not a fan of their liverys so far) the lotus and the force india all look worse than the ferrari. I don’t understand why people call it the ugliest car is it peer pressure by ferrari them selves calling it ugly? is it the fact it was the 2nd new car released? Maybe it’s because it’s all red and a sheer step so it’s easyer to see, I don’t know but the caterham to me is the most hatefull by a long way.

      Infact ferrari and sauber are probably my favourite looking step nosed cars from a purely artistic point of view.

      1. Personally, I think putting the number on it makes it a bit better.

        Having now seen pictures of all cars on track, the Ferrari nose still seems bulky and blocky, but the RB8 nose is pinched (with the bit missing that RB7 had before that hump) and the lotus just looks weird to me.

        But seeing them on track, I also just don’t mind the nose all that much, just can’t wait to finally see them go for it in Melbourne!

      2. Ferrari is uglier because it has more staff that are ugly than just the bump on the nose. Look at what is holding the frond wing for example.

        1. “Ferrari is uglier because it has more staff that are ugly than just the bump on the nose. Look at what is holding the frond wing for example.”

          More stuff that are ugly than just the bump on the nose and your example is…the nose? Ok saying i take your point what exactly apart from the bump makes ferraris nose different and more ugly than any other lol?

          1. First i said the “bump” on the nose and when i said what is holding the frond wing i meant those columns(i don’t know their name sorry if someone could enlighten me i’ll be grateful) that connect the frond wing with the nose. Just look how square looking and fat they are?

      3. Gibo is driving (@)
        13th February 2012, 11:30

        I also think that the Ferrari doesn’t look that bad. Of course when compared to the McLaren it looks so much more edgy and “unfinished”, but maybe considering the rivalry between the two teams, the cars should look like rival designs and in this respect the teams have both done a very good job

        1. @Solo

          I actually like the square look of the F2012 nose and front end. Not that I’d pefer it to the conventional low nose racing car look, but just that it makes it look different to the other cars around. What I didn’t like about the Caterham though was that it resembles exactly a gharial croc.

          I think Williams is another of the ugliest cars this season.

  11. There’s maybe a reason that Ferrari needs to get the brillo out. Here’s the number of laps per team:

    Toro Rosso – 475
    Lotus – 404
    Williams – 372
    Caterham – 358
    Mercedes – 348
    McLaren – 313
    Force India – 306
    Sauber – 298
    Red Bull – 297
    Ferrari – 270
    HRT – 108

    Note that if you exclude Mercedes and HRT for “invalid” cars and Marussia for [whatever], Ferrari are the bottom of the pile.

    Fastest laps (available elsewhere) are probably irrelevant at this stage of the testing programme — but are still interesting as the overall pecking order seems vaguely logical.

    1. Well the ammount of laps covered doesn’t prove anything either but it is interesting. I was going to say that ferrari and redbull have done so few laps but actually if you compare them to mclaren (which you have to really) what are they? 40 and 20 laps down respectively? it’s not that terrible is it? they’re only down half a days flat out testing mclaren had much bigger problems last year.

    2. we must not forget the fact that this time last year ferrari were poundig 100s of laps, whereas mclaren barely made it to the end of the pitlane and we know how that turned out…

    3. Red Bull are only 27 laps ahead, and Mclaren are only 40 ahead,.

      I think it’s not hugely useful statistics.

    4. I’m amazed by how many laps Force India have done, considering Bianchi (?) smashed the car up and they lost best part of a day’s testing.

  12. Re: Ferrari

    ‘Tis a pity one cannot polish a ….

    ;)

    1. Sorry bro mythbusters proved you can try typing that into youtube and don’t worry, whilst i wouldn’t want to do it my self the video isn’t a horror show. :P

      1. haha, I should have remembered mythbusters!

  13. Loved the article by Bruno Senna. I cannot imagine what it must be like for his family watching him follow in Aryton’s footsteps, it must be very difficult but at the same time the must be immensely proud of him. Such a tragedy that Aryton himself is not alive to see this, you can bet your bottom dollar he would be parked on the Williams pitwall at Melbourne if he were still with us.
    As for the new Ferrari, I know its ugly, but I reserve judgement on it until Melbourne. I remember well that last year the McLaren was supposed to be a dog due to posting slow times during testing, yet surprised everybody once the season started.
    I am more interested in who the dark horse team of 2012 is going to be. We know the big boys will be fast, but I fancy Force India to do something this year. Besides, of the new cars, I like how the Force India looks! Ofcourse, I also hope the Williams is not another turkey especially for young Bruno’s sake.

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