F1 - Ferrari Owners' Club

GRAND PRIX: Italy : Right Engine, Wrong Car
by Winston D'Arcy

23.9.08

It is lunchtime at Maranello in the week of the Italian Grand Prix, everyone is at their pasta and Lambrusco. An elderly ex Parmalat Fiat van wheezes up to the sacred portal; it is Minardi coming to collect their customer engines. Giovanni the Gateman glances up from his Gazetta dello Sport, grunts and raises the barrier. The Minardi mechanics in their oil-stained, baggy brown overalls make their way to the unattended loading bay and shuffle the nearest couple of engines into their van. Giovanni barely looks up from his paper and waves them through, the smoke from his smoldering Marlboro tracing a lazy arc in the warm Emilian air....

Only later in the afternoon does anybody realise that not only have Minardi taken the works engines, they've taken the Monza works engines! Minardi qualify first and fourth and the German schoolboy who was only there on a holiday job to learn Italian wins the GP. Ferrari qualify sixth and 14th and struggle home sixth and ninth.

Total fantasy of course; if the gateman at Ferrari is called Giovanni that's pure coincidence. I'm sure he is extremely assiduous and probably a non-smoker to boot. In fact the only thing that is not fantasy is the results. However, Toro Rosso are not Minardi, no more than Renault are Toleman, well maybe a little more. This is not some tiny under financed team, making their own chassis and struggling along with second-rate engines and rent-a-drivers. They are a highly professional team, well led and properly resourced with a brilliant young driver.They run a car produced regardless of cost by one of the greatest designers in the sport and engines which are the equal of any and better than most. They are also on the same tyres as everyone else.

Their Monza win did not come from nowhere. They have been moving inexorably up the grid as they got to grips with this year's chassis and were upgraded to works Ferrari engine spec at Hockenheim. Vettel was quickest in Q2 at Valencia and Bourdais in Q1 in Belgium. Vettel finished sixth in the European GP and fifth in Belgium. Bourdais, who is still struggling to come to terms with F1, was seventh in Belgium and should have been on the podium. Also, it was wet, which often upsets the status quo but this is not to take anything away from Toro Rosso - they did a fantastic job at Monza and were the better racers in every way.

The weather dominated proceedings for the second race in succession. It rained so hard that pit garages flooded and in qualifying it was afeard that they might run out of full wets, there only being three sets per car. In Q2 Raikkonen and Kubica both spun and finished up 14th and 11th. McLaren again showed all of the signs of being an organisation where no detail is unattended to and everything is organised to the "nth" degree, but seem unable to cope with chaos. When they make a "racer's call" they mostly get it wrong. With nothing to gain and everything to loose, Hamilton inexplicably went out on inters in the streaming wet. Slithering around, unable to generate any speed, hence downforce, hence grip, a cold brake glazed immediately. When the wets were bolted on it was too late. He looked totally at sea and also spun at Ascari. Result - 15th on the grid.

Massa made it through to Q3 and ended up sixth on the grid. Kovalainen was second for McLaren, but there was Red Bull everywhere, because not only was Vettel a brilliant first and Bourdais fourth for Toro Rosso, Webber was third for the senior team, Crazy D, he goin' down in Q2. In de race he tanglin' wit anudder, dis time dat Nakajimmy.

Sunday was wet, so the race started behind the Safety Car. Vettel rocketed away and drove a supremely confident race, not putting a wheel wrong that I could see. The car was obviously working well, because even in the wet I was surprised by the forcefulness of the steering inputs it would accept, also there was no sawing away at the wheel. His first stop was four laps earlier than the others and his second fell just right on lap 36. The rain had abated and, even though more was forecast, STR bolted on a set of inters. The rain held off as Vettel raced to a great win.

The standard tactic in a wet race for those who qualify outside the top ten is to fill the car up and one-stop, the conditions reducing the disadvantage of running heavy, but this time it did not work out, at least for Hamilton. His car was clearly working well and he had clearly recovered his form, scything his way through he field up to second place by a series of bold and decisive moves. But McLaren threw it away - again. When he made his only stop for fuel on lap 27 it was drying up, but more rain was forecast so full wets were fitted. McLaren took the conservative decision and it was wrong. Alonso pitted three laps later for inters and raced through to fourth. Hamilton had to stop again and ended up seventh. His team-mate Kovalainen drove a good No.2's race, solid and unspectacular into second.

Felipe Massa was one place ahead of Hamilton after a fighting race. To the surprise of many, Ferrari had announced that Raikkonen's contract had been extended to the end of 2010. Despite this, he had another difficult race, missing the cut for Q3 and ending up an undistinguished ninth. This was another race where Ferrari just could not get their car to work. It seems that the F2008 does not keep the heat in its tyres as well as other chassis, notably the McLaren. [See Stefano Domenicali's comments below - Ed.].

The problem also seems to afflict Raikkonen more than Massa. To be fair to Raikkonen, his car did look dreadful, slithering about when he was vainly trying to fight Hamilton. BUT, he is paid a lot of money and should be able to adapt to anything AND he set the fastest lap of the race on the very last lap! One cannot help but feel things would be better if Schuey was in the car. Raikkonen will surely be under orders to support Massa from now on in a fight for the title wherein both Ferrari and McLaren look decidedly shaky.

Given the events in Belgium, I paid close attention to corner cutting at Monza. Many drivers, including Vettel, regularly cut corners with impunity. It seems that as long as they at least had their outside wheels on a kerb they were OK.. Only when all four wheels were clearly on the infield did they feel the need to cede any place they had gained. [See Massa's comments below - Ed]. You might argue that there is no case to answer if they did not pass anyone, but if it didn't give an advantage they wouldn't do it would they?

This was an interesting and enjoyable race and a great achievement for Sebastian Vettel and Toro Rosso, but by no means was it one of the most extraordinary races in the history of the sport, as some have claimed. That is just romantic nonsense. What it does show is what can be achieved by a talented driver in a good team with a customer car. It makes you wonder where Prodrive would have been with a customer McLaren had they been allowed to proceed. It is also clear that if F1 is serious about improving racing and cutting costs, then customer cars are one way forward.

Stop Press
Surprise, surprise, the FIA have rejected McLaren's appeal against Hamilton's Belgian GP penalty, on the grounds that it is inadmissable because "drive-through penaties are not susceptible to appeal". In case you think you are missing something, the "offence" should have been subject to a drive-through penalty, but couldn't be as the race had finished by the time the Stewards had decided what to do, so a 25 second penalty was imposed instead. No, I don't get it either.

Stefano Domenicali:

" Once again today, we had confirmation that, in certain track conditions and temperature range, our car is not quick enough. Then, it only needs a slight change for the performance to return to being very competitive. Clearly we must take countermeasures as quickly as possible because similar conditions could occur in the remaining four races. Having said that, we must not forget that we have taken a small step forward in the Drivers' classification although our lead in the Constructors' has reduced substantially. Finally I would like to congratulate Scuderia Toro Rosso, which uses our engines and Sebastian Vettel on their first Formula 1 win: they did a perfect job all weekend and they deserve this moment of great joy."

Felipe Massa:

"It was a tough race: I had hoped to do better but I'm also aware it could have been worse. In fact, I've managed to make up a point on my nearest rival so this is absolutely not a negative result. In normal conditions, in other words in the dry, I think I could have made it to the podium. In the first part, I was struggling because there was not much grip. In the incident when I overtook Rosberg, I lost a few seconds when the team told me I had to give back the position: that was probably the decisive moment because after the first pit stop, I found myself in traffic. On top of that, when it was time to switch from the extreme rain tyres to the standard ones, those who had opted to do just one stop definitely had the advantage."

Kimi Räikkönen :

"This was a very difficult race for us. In the conditions at the start, as we have seen before in the past, we could not keep our tyres up to temperature and we totally lacked grip. I could do nothing but try to stay on the track hoping the conditions would change. When they did, unfortunately it was too late to aim for a points finish. The car worked well but without grip, you're not going anywhere. The situation in the Drivers' championship is now even more difficult, but I will continue to give it my best shot as usual."

THE ITALIAN GRAND PRIX, MONZA, ITALY. 53 LAPS: WEATHER: WET.
Classified:
Pos	Driver	Team	Time
1.	Vettel	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1.26:47.000
2.	Kovalainen	McLaren	+ 12.512
3.	Kubica	BMW Sauber	+ 20.471
4.	Alonso	Renault	+ 23.903
5.	Heidfeld	BMW Sauber	+ 27.748
6.	Massa	Ferrari	+ 28.816
7.	Hamilton	McLaren	+ 29.012
8.	Webber	Red Bull	+ 32.048

9.	Raikkonen	Ferrari	+ 39.468

Fastest lap: Raikkonen 1:28.047

World Championship Standings, Round 14

Drivers:			Constructors:
1.	Hamilton	78	1.	Ferrari	134
2.	Massa	77	2.	McLaren	129
3.	Kubica	64	3.	BMW Sauber	117
4.	Raikkonen	57	4.=	Toyota	41
5.	Heidfeld	53	4.=	Renault	41
6.	Kovalainen	51	6.	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	27
7.	Alonso	28	7.	Red Bull	26
8.	Trulli	26	8.	Williams	17
9.	Vettel	23	9.	Honda	14
10.	Webber	20
11.	Glock	15
12.	Piquet	13
13.	Barrichello	11
14,	Rosberg	9
15.	Nakajima	8
16.	Coulthard	6
17.	Bourdais	4
18.	Button	3