The last
members of the team came back yesterday morning from
Sepang, where the Malaysian GP was held on Easter
Sunday. In the afternoon Chairman Luca di Montezemolo
met Stefano Domenicali and the technicians for the
traditional debriefing after the races in the Scuderia's
offices, where the whole weekend and the problems, which
had appeared, where analysed.
Naturally the
team wasn't happy about the result, inferior to the
expectations and the potential, which was there to be used.
The mistake made during Q1 negatively conditioned the whole
race: from the 19th and the 21st position on the grid for
Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa one could hardly expect
more than a place in the points without any external
elements – rain or safety-car – considering how the race
went. The objective was partially reached with Felipe, who
came in seventh, while the engine failure took away
Fernando's two points, which would have been precious
anyway. The disappointment about a negative weekend should
not wipe out the satisfaction about a start in the season
with the two Scuderia drivers on the first and second place
in the Drivers' standings and the team leading in the
Constructors' standings. It needs to remembered that last
year after three races there weren't any points gained yet
and the men and women in Maranello are proud of the work
done so far this year, knowing that they still have to work
hard especially regarding reliability and performance.
Reliability was
also the main topic of today's analysis during the meeting.
Not only was there a problem with the engine of car number
8, but also one with the gearbox, which negatively
conditioned the race of the Spanish driver as of the
formation lap. Furthermore both Sauber single-seaters were
complaining about an engine problem: De La Rosa could not
even start and Kobayashi had to stop after eight laps. The
analysis confirmed that the problems on the Swiss cars
didn't have anything to do with Alonso's engine failure, but
were caused by a malfunction of the electronic engine
management. The failure of Alonso's V8 happened two laps
before the end of the race, without any parameter showing
any sort of anomaly, which means that there is no connection
between this problem and the one in Sakhir, caused by a
momentary overheating, which lead the team to the decision
to change the engines on both cars after the qualifying for
the Bahrain GP. It's possible that the problem with the
gearbox could have caused some consequences for the engine,
used in an anomalous way for the whole race, but it's clear
that a more precise analysis can only be made when the
engine is back at the works on Wednesday afternoon.
As far as the
performance at the Malaysian GP is concerned the
competitiveness of the Scuderia Ferrari's package has been
confirmed, which doesn't mean that the team is not working
hard on improvements. The goal is to bring new elements to
every race and they are giving it all to have something
significant also on the occasion of the Chinese Grand Prix.
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Malaysian Grand Prix de-brief with Stefano Domenicali