Wind tunnel to blame for failure: Domenicali

Suzuka, 5 Oct 2012: Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali has admitted that problems at the team’s ageing wind tunnel have been to blame for a series of car updates that failed to bring any improvement in recent races.

“In the second part of the season, when we were trying to bring new updates on the car, not all the updates were working on the track,” he admitted. “So, we started to investigate and we found (an) issue coming from a tool that is… not obsolete, but not really up to the speed of the new technologies available on the market.

 

“I think for sure our structure is not the best one in that respect; it is quite old,” he added. “So, as always we’re trying to improve the quality of the tools that we have. And this is something that we are trying to do mainly to improve the correlation issue that we had and this is the plan: that we should be able to do (so) in the next season.”

But despite attempting to adjust for the unreliable data by using Toyota’s wind tunnel in Cologne as well its own Maranello facility, Domenicali admitted that the team will face a tough battle in trying to keep Fernando Alonso at the top of the Drivers’ Championship standings, where he currently enjoys a 29-point advantage over a resurgent Sebastian Vettel.

“The plan is to try to push as much as we can, bring new developments every race but it isn’t easy,” he said. “I think the situation in the championship is very clear: if you are not able to improve the car then it is more difficult to fight for the championship because we cannot rely on the problem of the others. That’s the fact but it doesn’t mean that we will not push as hard as possible. But we cannot rely only on being third, fourth, whatever it is. We need to make sure that at least we win a race and then we will see what will be the situation with the others.”

ends