Ferrari plan to introduce significant developments at every single race this season until the very last round in Brazil, something they believe will be important to sustaining their title challenge.
The Italian outfit started on the back foot before the season had even begun with a car way off the leading pace, but despite that, Fernando Alonso managed to win thr Malaysian Grand Prix and currently sits second to Lewis Hamilton in the drivers’ championship.
Nikolas Tombazis, Ferrari’s chief designer, put their recent good form down to hard work and determination back at the factory to succeed.
“It’s been intense over the past few months resulting in a big improvement in car performance,” he said. “We have worked with determination to deal with all the negative points we picked up right from the first test in the winter.”
“At the moment, we are reasonably satisfied with the point we are at now, given where we started from, however, we cannot be totally happy, as we are not in a position to dominate races, or indeed to win all of them, which is always one’s objective.”
Whilst Ferrari may have made the best of a bad start, Tombazis admits the team were shocked when the true pace of their car was uncovered in pre-season testing, but the recent performances have provided the perfect tonic.
“Rightly or wrongly there is an expectation that, as Ferrari, we must be winning every race and always be competitive. At the start of the season we were in an uncompetitive situation, which was a big shock for me personally and for my colleagues. It has been a hard few months, but we put our heads down and tackled the problem calmly and I think the last few races have been a morale boost for all of us: it has made us believe we can get the job done.”
Now the aim, according to the Greek designer, is to introduce steady upgrades at each and every race to ensure both Alonso and Felipe Massa can challenge for the title.
“We have very strong competitors who are also continuing to develop their cars and we feel this technology race will continue to the end of the season,” he added.
“Our work is continuing at the same intensity and, our plan is to introduce developments at every race, starting with Valencia: this weekend we will be experimenting with the front wing and the floor, while having further evolutions of the exhausts. We already have other updates in the pipeline for subsequent races and I believe this will continue right through to the very last race.”
