Ferrari have yet to score any points in the 2009 Formula One season. This should be no suprise since I’ve been talking about this for the last three races. Even though Ferrari are confident they will do better in the coming races; that’s still a half-assed statement. When you’re at the bottom of the championship leaderboard, you have no place but to go up. My honest opinion is that they won’t do much better in Bahrain than what they accomplished in previous three races. That would be “zero” if you haven’t been paying attention. Ferrari are hopeful though and that’s a good sign. They’ve done some of their pre-season testing there and did pretty good. They should have a good baseline setup for the car and they know what they need to change in order for a good result.
KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) should be back on the car and this will help re-establish their baseline for weight distribution. I believe that when they removed this system from the car for the Chinese GP that the weight distribution of the car was detrimental to the balance of the car.
Kimi Raikkonen, normally a good wet weather driver, was getting passed by people not as good. Granted he did state that there was a problem with the engine early on in the race. Felipe Massa had electrical problems that resulted in his retirement. For me, the biggest surprise was Heikki Kovalainen. He moved all the way up to 5th position, starting from 12th. Vettel was not really a surprise as he’s always good in the rain. I always thought that Webber was a good driver as well, just really unlucky with people running into him. Team Brawn were expected to be up there as well. Another big surprise was watching Louis Hamilton spinning out as often as he did. Obviously overworking the car trying to get to the front.
Ferrari with no points after three races in 2009
All in all though, my thoughts are with Ferrari and their lack of performance. As a true Ferrari fan, I will continue to support them (as long as Kimi drives for them) and hope that they will overcome their problems. In a statement gathered from F1technical.net, Niki Lauda says, “Now the Italians are running it all. Does it work? It could be chaos. That’s the problem.” He’s referencing that Ferrari have become too specialized in getting Italians to work the shop. However, in the more successful days they had Englishmen and Germans working there as well. This meant that they were more diversified and had a broader rage of work ethics and habbits. Ferrari should rethink their goals and bring in some fresh minds from other countries to look at different ways to solve the same problem… getting championship points.
