Anybody follow F1 closely enough to have a clue what's going on with Ferrari? They started and finished 13th and 14th at Spa.
The consensus seems to be that it's to do with engine power, and that the car was never as aerodynamically efficient as was supposed; a mysterious and significant decline in engine power has put Ferrari in the embarrassing position of being slower than they were last year.
The C4 commentary team alluded briefly to a 'clarification of the rules' by the FIA without any more explanation. This surely means the clarifications around peak fuel flow measurement which is the only one I recall pre-season? It was a response to questions from Red Bull about the legality of certain hypothetical methods of massaging fuel flow data, presumably designed to flush out whatever Ferrari was doing.
The obvious inference is that Ferrari had found a way to massage the fuel flow data which would be quite clever as it is sampled around 2,000 times per second. They have now been prevented from doing that so they can't win.
The Ferrari chassis looks as if it's nothing special anyway. Their own cars both finished behind Raikonnen's Sauber/Alfa Romeo which has the same engine.
As for the rest, Hamilton, Bottas, Verstappen and Ricciardo started 1-2-3-4 and finished in that order - the only surprise there being Renault, who actually finished 4th and 5th. There was some reasonable action back down the field.
I am just not understanding why the presenters and their interviewees were affecting? to be puzzled by Ferrari's terrible performance - have I got it wrong?
|