Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali and technical director Pat Fry both flew back to the team’s Maranello factory on Monday for an emergency meeting.
With the season opening race confirming the Italian outfits poor form, in which Felipe Massa qualified 16th and Fernando Alonso 12th, a crisis meeting was called at Ferrari HQ in a bid to turn things around, despite the Australian and Malaysian GP’s being back-to-back races.
“Stefano Domenicali and Pat Fry have for their part headed back to Maranello, where they will arrive late tonight,” the team explained. “Indeed there is no time to lose as there’s a pressing need to push flat-out on the development of the F2012.”
Speculation suggests Ferrari may need to redesign its sidepods to accomodate an all new exhaust layout to more closely mirror that of McLaren and Red Bull – something which would require a second side-impact crash test. Such an update isn’t expected until the return to Europe in May.
Smaller updates will be brought to rounds three and four in a bid to fix some more minor ‘fundamental issues’ which are hampering the cars top-speed, which was 10km/h slower than Lewis Hamilton’s in Australia, and the F2012’s poor traction.
“We have fundamental issues,” Domenicali admitted. “One is the speed, and the other thing is the traction. Obviously the car will be nearly identical [in Malaysia] because it’s next weekend, but we will try to improve something in the set-ups. And then for China, Bahrain etc, we will bring some updates. Hopefully, it will get better.”
