Formula One, Fernando Alonso, Felipe Massa, ferrarri, Ferrari
It seems like the F1 Ferrari has taken Fernando Alonso’s critique to heart. This week the Spaniard, Fernando Alonso hailed the F1 Ferrari as an “almost perfect team” before lambasting against their lack of testing. Well, in order to redeem themselves the F1 Ferrari has announced a couple of upgrades on the F2012.
The F1 Ferrari took the first step of unveiling their new major upgrades on the F2012 at Mugello on Thursday. The upgrades on F2012 were basically revisions to the old exhaust exits and rear bodywork.
After a turbulent start to the season, the F1 Ferrari hopes to catch their competitors with their new upgrades. The F1 Ferrari team plans to use Mugello as ground zero for their testing. Meanwhile, the Spanish Grand Prix would act as a perfect stage for their comeback.
Although, the F1 Ferrari team revealed all of its latest updates on Thursday in a press conference; the first items of the upgrades started appearing on Wednesday. The news of F1 Ferrari’s upgrades first hit the news when Felipe Massa attempted to test the upgraded car under the nose of the media.
Fernando Alonso took the car for a spin on Thursday and returned with beaming results. The whole of the F1 Ferrari team were exuberant over their achievements. The AUTOSPORT technical consultant Gary Anderson later explained that the new upgrades would give a unique the F1 Ferrari car a huge edge on the track.
“On the sidepods they've put the exhaust pipes into a more conventional position,” said Gary Anderson. “They are not getting any great degree of benefit, but they're not getting any negatives either, and I think with a troublesome car that's the best place to get to.
“Because of the way the letterbox exit for the exhaust was being used for a radiator exit they've had to compromise a little. They still have a radiator exit there in the new iteration, but it is much narrower and the coke bottle is much better.
“I think what they have done is a reasonable compromise for where they are. They can exploit it further though by getting rid of the radiator, and I think that will be phase two.
“It's very difficult to quantify the changes in terms of lap time, but I do believe they lost quite a lot of downforce with the letterbox radiator exit system they had. It just isn't right to feed low speed air from the radiator into an area where you want high-speed flow.
Potentially you could be looking at two or three tenths from that one change alone.”
These upgrades should silence critics for a bit. The F1 Ferrari has long since been criticized for producing cars which lack the ability to win races.
