This is nonsense. Yes, it is a serious situation because they violated a rule which says that team orders are banned. And we should be in no doubt, despite the denials of Alonso that team orders were invoked here. But you have to look at the wider picture and acknowledge that it is a question of degree and that some common sense needs to be applied when sorting this matter out.

No-one was left in any doubt about what was happening by the tone and language of the message to Felipe Massa, nor by his subsequent yielding of the lead to Alonso. It is clear that Ferrari have a case to answer in terms of breaking a rule. They have been fined $100,000 by the stewards in Hockenheim, but further sanctions may follow from the WMSC.

People will of course point to the irony of FIA president Jean Todt presiding over this, given that it was his team order to Rubens Barrichello in 2002 which led to the introduction of the rule. But Todt has separated his position from the disciplinary procedure of the FIA, part of his distinction from the previous regime of Max Mosley. So he will not be sitting in judgement on this one. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be a force for change once the case has been heard. Because change is needed here.

The outcry back in 2002 was against the cynicism of the decision to give the win to Schumacher when he had been outclassed by Barrichello all weekend. It was very early in the season and Schumacher was already well clear in the points in an unbeatable car.

This situation is different on many counts. leaving aside the rule specifically banning team orders for a second, the championship is well advanced and it is closely fought. Ferrari feel aggrieved that they are at least 30 points worse off with Alonso than they should have been, largely due to some stewards decisions which have gone against them, rightly or wrongly. Massa too has lost points, but hasn’t been on the kind of form Alonso’s been on, so the Spaniard is clearly the one to go for the title, if Ferrari can only get him in the game.

He was faster than Massa all weekend and qualified in front of him, but then lost the start to the Brazilian and then couldn’t get ahead of him in the pit stops. If Ferrari had wanted to do a subtle switch, a slightly delayed pit stop for Massa would have done the trick. A second or two is all that it would have needed.

A big part of the problem here is the way it was handled, with Rob Smedley being given the task of giving his driver the bad news. It should have been Stefano Domenicali, the team boss, or Chris Dyer, the senior engineer. Smedley’s close relationship with Massa meant that he would inevitably struggle to deliver the message impartially and when he felt obliged afterwards to apologise – “Good lad, keep it going, sorry” – it sealed the conviction in our minds that this was a team order.

Eddie Irvine, who has been on the receiving end of a few “move over” orders in his time, said last night that he felt Smedley and Massa had overblown it to make a point and in doing so had let the team down. It has certainly landed them in hot water.

But the wider question is, should F1 have this rule banning team orders, should teams be able to act in the interests of the championship and are moves like this acceptable in some situations?

Think back to 2007, when Massa moved over in Brazil to let Raikkonen win the championship or the following year when the roles were reversed – did anyone object then? No, so that means that fans can understand there are occasions when teams do need some mechanism for shuffling the order, it’s just a question of the circumstances.

Given this, much of the hype in the media today is just that. It’s not race fixing and it’s not even in the same league as the Renault fix in Singapore with Nelson Piquet (which was ironically also to benefit Alonso).

There is a case to answer before the WMSC, but I would like to see the FIA take this opportunity to review the team orders rule and I would like to see FOTA stand behind Ferrari and come up with some proposals as to how this rule can best be adapted to work in the best interests of teams and of fans in modern F1.

It’s all very well for Christian Horner to say that he lets his drivers race, but come Brazil or Abu Dhabi when, for example, Hamilton is leading the championship and Vettel has a chance of beating him, if only his team mate, who’s well behind on points lets him through, are you telling me that he won’t make the switch? Of course he will and Webber will know before the start of the race what the score is.

People would expect it and understand it. The problem comes when it’s considered too early in the season. Perhaps the rule should be that there can be no team orders until the final third of the championship? That would be a simple solution.

But to reinforce the rule that team orders are banned full stop, would be a terrible mistake. It would create yet another artificiality, which would be more damaging to the sport in the long run.

Please send in your suggestions for how the FIA should handle the hearing and what changes if any should be brought in to the team orders rule. As always I will forward any that I feel have some merit on to the teams and to the FIA.

Unlike Red Bull and McLaren, Ferrari has been obliged to copy both of the key technical innovations of the 2010 season; the F Duct rear wing and the blown diffuser. McLaren invented the former and Red Bull the latter so both have had half the work to do compared to Ferrari in overall incorporation of new tech.

Ferrari worked first on the F Duct and got bogged down with it, then the blown diffuser was introduced later. The signs were clear in Montreal that Ferrari had taken a step forward and then in Valencia they introduced the blown diffuser. In Silverstone the step in performance was confirmed with Alonso being barely a tenth off the Red Bulls through practice and the early part of qualifying, but at Hockenheim it all came together and Fernando Alonso qualified on the front row, with Massa just behind. In the race, Ferrari had better race pace than Red Bull, indicating that they are contenders for the second half of the season.

Ferrari updates get them in the game
Hockenheim was the third outing of the blown diffuser introduced in Valencia and detailed changes to the exhausts and floor optimised the solution together with a refinement of the F-duct system. Ferrari have modified the side channels of their diffuser. This one now sports a wider and diagonal opening compared to the standard perpendicular one seen in Valencia when the solution was introduced the first time.

Ferrari also had a step on the front wing, which improved the overall downforce and stablity of the car, leading both drivers to talk of greatly improved grip and driveability. Another big step from Ferrari is due at the Belgian Grand Prix at the end of August, where heavily revised back end aerodynamics will be brought out.

Mercedes rear wing
Mercedes, for its home race brought an array of small developments, the main one being to the rear wing main profile, now featuring two big slits in its central section, to increase the efficiency of this element producing a slightly increased downforce load. The main feature is a double large opening, placed in the middle section of the main profile, mimicking the effect of an additional flap. This solution helps in terms of increasing the downforce load generated by the wing. Mercedes do not have the full active F Duct system operated by the drivers, as used by its rivals, they have a more passive system. It was useful in Germany, although the car is still short of the pace of its rivals and will be even more useful in Hungary.

McLaren blown diffuser
McLaren ran the blown diffuser all weekend in Germany, although their deficit to Ferrari and Red Bull in qualifying and at the end of the race indicates that there is still work to be done to optimise it. In Silverstone they removed it after Friday practice because it was overheating components in the rear suspension and the on-off nature of the exhaust gas pressure, combined with the bumps in the Silverstone track was causing instability.

In Germany they introduced modifications to reduce the overheating problems and now the exhaust pipes are in a more external position , sporting a diagonal cut instead of the perpendicular one adopted previously. This is still a work in progress and McLaren now need to add the next step in performance to stay with the Red Bulls and Ferraris.

Although the message was coded it was unmistakeably a team order, which are banned in F1. The team will also know that Massa’s motivation will have been torpedoed by this moment.

Alonso: Has priority at Ferrari (Darren Heath)

The 1-2 finish for Ferrari is the first since the opening race in Bahrain. The car has been on the pace since Montreal, but wasn’t able to get the results in Valencia or Silverstone, where Alonso should have been on the podium but for falling foul of the stewards. The Ferraris lapped everybody up to Kubica in 7th place.

It makes for an interesting championship situation, with the two Red Bull drivers now tied on points and now 21 points behind Hamilton, with Alonso back in the title race.

At the start, Vettel was so concerned about Alonso coming down the inside that he forgot about Felipe Massa down the outside. The Brazilian flew into the lead and Alonso tucked in behind in second place. Vettel was forced to accept third place, while Webber was passed by Hamilton for fourth place. Further back Schumacher made a great start from 11th to 8th and the two Toro Rosso cars hi5t each other Buemi losing his rear wing.

Ferrari were delighted with a 1-2 at this stage, but the wrong car was in the lead in many ways, with Massa well behind Alonso in the drivers’ championship.

The super soft tyres held up pretty well and Vettel was the first of the front runners to pit on lap 14, as the lap times were coming down impressively. Alonso and Webber pitted a lap later, with Webber rejoining in traffic and losing ground.

Massa pitted on lap 16 and rejoined ahead of Alonso, but as we have seen all season he was not as happy on the hard tyre as on the soft and he locked up consistently, but Alonso did not attack for a while.

We had another great fight between Schumacher and Kubica after the Pole’s pit stop, but he held his nerve and fought off the great champion.

Alonso soon closed up and was in a position to attack on lap 23, but Massa resisted. Alonso cam on the radio to say “This is ridiculous,” clearly feeling as he did at Indianapolis in 2007 when he followed Hamilton in the McLarens.

Button pitted late, lap 24 and he got out ahead of Mark Webber. Nico Rosberg also used the tactic of stopping a lap later and he jumped his team mate Michael Schumacher for 8th.

Massa started pulling away from Alonso and Vettel, the gap was out to 3.5 seconds by lap 28. Alonso clawed it back slowly, and by lap 35 it was down to 2 seconds, down to 1 second on lap 40. Meanwhile McLaren told Lewis Hamilton to go on a fuel saving mode in fourth place and Mark Webber was instructed to nurse the car to the finish and not challneg Button for 5th place.

On lap 50 a very reluctant sounding Rob Smedley came on the radio to tell Massa, “Fernando is faster than you,” which is code for “Let Alonso through.” He later came on and said “Sorry” to Massa, showing how hard it had been to deliver that message.

Massa obeyed and the Spaniard duly swept past to take the win. But after the race it was announced that the FIA World Motor Sport Council is to be called in to decide whether Ferrari should face further sanctions for the team orders controversy at the German Grand Prix, after the team was fined $100,000 for flouting the team orders rule. It should be remembered that the rule was brought in because of a Ferrari team order in 2002 which was very unpopular with fans.

German Grand Prix, Hockenheim, 67 Laps
1. Alonso Ferrari 1h28:38.866
2. Massa Ferrari + 4.196
3. Vettel Red Bull-Renault + 5.121
4. Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes + 26.896
5. Button McLaren-Mercedes + 29.482
6. Webber Red Bull-Renault + 43.606
7. Kubica Renault + 1 lap
8. Rosberg Mercedes + 1 lap
9. Schumacher Mercedes + 1 lap
10. Petrov Renault + 1 lap
11. Kobayashi Sauber-Ferrari + 1 lap
12. Barrichello Williams-Cosworth + 1 lap
13. Hulkenberg Williams-Cosworth + 1 lap
14. De la Rosa Sauber-Ferrari + 1 lap
15. Alguersuari Toro Rosso-Ferrari + 1 lap
16. Liuzzi Force India-Mercedes + 2 laps
17. Sutil Force India-Mercedes + 2 laps
18. Glock Virgin-Cosworth + 3 laps
19. Senna HRT-Cosworth + 4 laps

Ferrari sporting director Massimo Rivola today released a minute by minute account of Ferrari’s actions during the period after the disputed overtake. He reveals that Ferrari was on the radio to FIA Race Director Charlie Whiting within 14 seconds of the incident.

Alonso: Seriously unhappy (Darren Heath)

Whiting said earlier this week in the Italian magazine Autosprint, “We told Ferrari three times that in my opinion they should give the position back to Kubica. We told them that immediately, right after the overtaking manoeuvre. On the radio, I suggested to them that if they exchange position again, there would be no need for the stewards to intervene.

“They didn’t do that, and on the third communication they said that Kubica was by then too far back to let him regain the position. It’s not true at all that the stewards took too long to decide. For us, the facts were clear immediately – Alonso had gained an advantage by cutting the track.”

However today in Gazzetta dello Sport, Rivola contests this view.
” We don’t want a polemic, but there are some things to be cleared up here because Ferrari made decisions with a certain logic. Rivola says that he was straight on to Whiting at 1-31pm after Alonso’s move, asking him to review the pass and saying that in Ferrari’s view there wasn’t room to pass Kubica on the track. Whiting asked for time to view the pictures of the pass.

At 1-33pm Ferrari called back, Alonso is now a lap and one sector further on and in pursuit of Rosberg, while Kubica is falling back. Whiting says that the stewards think that Alonso should give the place back. Rivola asks if that is a final decision. No, says Whiting but that’s how we see it. Meanhwile on track Kubica falls further back and Alonso passes Alguersuari.

At 1-33pm and 22 seconds Rival points out that Alonso now has Alguersuari between him and Kubica. While they are speaking Barrichello passes Kubica so there are now three places between Alonso and Kubica.

According to Rivola, Whiting says that he gave Ferrari the possibility of giving the place back and that as things are as they are the stewards will hear you after the race. 30 seconds later Kubica retires.

At 1-45pm the stewards investigation begins and at 1-46, just 55 seconds later, the stewards decide that Alonso should get a drive through penalty.

Ferrari are very angry that for two races in a row the stewards have not acted fairly, in their view. In Valencia Lewis Hamilton overtook the safety car but the punishment was so late in coming that it didn’t penalise him at all, meanwhile Ferrari lost a lot of ground by doing the right thing.

Ferrari’s website this week carried a story focussing on newspaper articles in Italy and Spain, which criticise the FIA stewards and race director for the amount of time key decisions are taking this season, describing it as “Formula Lullaby”. There is also the suggestion that whether and when punishments are handed out depends on who it is that is being punished. And that Ferrari is being singled out for some special treatment.

Meanwhile team principal Stefano Domenicali has said that despite the big loss of points in the last two races which would have kept them in contention, the world championship is still winable.
“Anyone who does not believe that we can win the world championship would do better looking for another job,” he told his team. “No one here is giving up: there are still nine races to go and anything can happen. We will have to do our job perfectly, that is to say the Ferrari way and then the results will come.”

He is latest in long line of engineers to move between Maranello and Woking. It is a well trodden path for engineers, especially for aerodynamicists. This year John Iley came to the UK, while Nicolas Tombazis has moved both ways.

Fry was in an alternating design role at McLaren with Tim Goss. This year’s car is Goss’, last year’s and the 2007 car were Fry’s. He was due therefore to be in charge of next year’s McLaren.

He left McLaren a few months ago and most observers in the paddock reckoned that he was heading for Toro Rosso to be reunited with Giorgio Ascanelli, his old mentor from Benetton days.

But it was also suggested recently that Fry was looking for a role within an F1 team which might offer him a slightly less intense life. He has been at the coal face for many years, as David Coulthard’s engineer back in the Hakkinen/Coulthard years and more recently shouldering the responsibility for design.

A move to Ferrari, especially in a position of responsibility, would likely be very intense, so it will be interesting to see how the ostensibly hands-on role evolves, particularly if he is required to attend races.

Ferrari is due to unveil it’s new technical package in Valencia this weekend. The idea is to add a lot more downforce to the car to try to compete with Red Bull and McLaren in particular. The team has got very sidetracked since the start of the season with developing a drag reducing rear wing and still hadn’t perfected it on the last iteration of the car.

We will analyse Ferrari’s new package in depth in the LG Technical Report here on the site later this week. Initial indications are that it features the in-vogue blown diffuser, pioneered by Red Bull, whereby the exhaust exits are placed low and feed a slot in the diffuser for additional rear downforce. McLaren and Mercedes are due to unveil one of those soon as well.

There is a brief, snatched bootleg video of the alleged car during a recent filming day at Fiorano on You Tube. Although testing is banned, filming days with limited running are permitted, as are straight line aero tests.

Ferrari needs some fresh ideas in the design department. It is a few years since they came up with an idea everyone else wanted to copy, like double diffusers, F Duct wings and the like.

“In modern F1 races cars with GP2 levels of performance shouldn’t participate,” he said in Gazzetta dello Sport. Montezemolo may have been referring to Jarno Trulli’s Lotus and perhaps the Hispania of Karun Chandhok, which was being lapped when Alonso lost a place to Button.

“Our car had the pace to win, I hope in the future there are no more errors in lapping cars which are to our disadvantage, ” he added. “We already gave.”

Ferrari have always had a big downer on the new teams, of you recall a post on their website last year around Monaco time and several references since.

In fact, when you study the lap times, although they are somewhat erratic, Trulli’s pace around lap 39 for example was a mid 1m20, while Webber was leading doing 1m 19.6, Hamilton catching him on 1m 18.8 and Rosberg in midfield was doing 1m 21.6s.

The incident with Trulli which enraged Alonso was on lap 28 when Alonso was pitting. He had just done his fastest lap of the race to that point, a 1m 19.05, and was headed for the pits. Hamilton had pitted two laps earlier and Alonso was flat out to try to jump him at his second stop. “If Trulli hadn’t slowed me down I would have done it,” fumed Alonso on Sunday night.

“I lost two and a half seconds and when I came out of the pits I saw Hamilton ahead. Without traffic I would have had the lead.”

That lap Trulli did a 1m 24.7 and says that no blue flags were waved at him that lap.

Ferrari is calling for the drivers to agree a code for lapped cars to get out of the way. This is something F1 drivers have had to deal with as long as there has been racing.

Lotus boss Tony Fernandes is of the opinion that blue flags should be abandoned in F1. This is sure to be a key talking point in the coming weeks.

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Not only has the team fallen further behind Red Bull and McLaren, it has also been passed on pace by Mercedes and Renault. In the last two races, Robert Kubica has qualified ahead of both Ferraris.

Bahrain seems a long time ago (Darren Heath)

And with such a long history, there have inevitably been ups and downs along the way. Some sections of the Italian media have called this moment a “crisis”, but there have been worse.

Having said that, Turkey was a worrying development for Ferrari, which set the benchmark during winter testing. Let us not forget that the technical team stopped working on the 2009 car in July last year to focus on the 2010 car.

And yet while McLaren managed to develop its car right up to the end of 2009 and is now proving its technical strength again in 2010, Ferrari seems not to have the ability to match its long standing rival.

It would be wrong to say that it has been in a steady decline ever since Bahrain; Alonso was on the podium in Spain and the Ferrari was considered a contender for the win in Monaco, but for Alonso’s accident in practice.

But Turkey was a genuinely uncompetitive showing. Right from the start of qualifying it was clear that the Ferrari was in trouble on low fuel. Alonso’s Q1 time was 8/10ths slower than Vettel’s benchmark and that pattern stayed consistent through the qualifying session. Alonso missed the cut for Q3, but Massa’s Q3 time was 8/10ths slower than Webber’s pole. So that’s where Ferrari are and it shows the ferocity of the competition at the sharp end this year.

So why is this?

Well for the last few races now team boss Stefano Domenicali has said that the car lacks downforce. But that is just code for ‘it isn’t fast enough’. Last year’s Ferrari was a poor car which lacked downforce, but it still managed to qualify more strongly in Turkey than this year’s model, which won the first race.

Ferrari say that the reason for the poor showing in Istanbul qualifying is simple – the car just didn’t produce the goods when running low fuel and new soft tyres, compared to the opposition. Interestingly a pattern has emerged in the way the top teams approach Friday practice; McLaren and Mercedes tend to run lower fuel, while Ferrari and Red Bull run much heavier loads. For this reason the McLarens are usually on top of the time sheets on a Friday and seem more consistent than Ferrari in qualifying.

In Istanbul the temperatures changed a lot from Friday afternoon (50 deg) to Saturday morning (26 deg) to qualifying in the afternoon (36 deg). As Bridgestone’s Hirohide Hamashima observed after qualifying, “The changing temperatures made finding the best set-up even more difficult for the teams at this venue, where this is already a challenge due to the track surface evolution over the weekend. The difficult to judge grip levels meant that many people found the limit as they danced on the edge of adhesion today.”

F1 is all about trends and managing them. If you are on a negative trend you want to reverse it as soon as possible. If you have a positive trend you work hard to maintain it.

Perhaps the most worrying development which the team hope will not become a trend was Alonso criticising the team after qualifying. He said that the work done on the Ferrari was not sufficient, “In China, Spain, Montecarlo and here we haven’t brought developments, while Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes have moved ahead.”

A lot of Ferrari’s effort has gone into developing its drag reducing rear wing or F duct and it still isn’t right. Red Bull has been adding performance in other areas, while reluctant to run its F Duct until it is sure that the benefits outweigh the losses.

Ferrari has gone ahead with it, clearly believing that it is an essential component of the long term fight with McLaren in particular this year. Very soon Red Bull will be forced to do the same, judging by the threat the McLarens posed to them on Sunday.

McLaren’s strong showing in Turkey indicates that it is on a strong development curve at the moment and it has the luxury of a fully optimised F duct so it can focus on other areas, while Ferrari and Red Bull toil away at the F Duct and get distracted by it.

“It is for sure true that we have invested a lot in the new system with the wing, but it is not enough and it is not perfect yet,” admitted Domenicali. “What should happen in the next month is that in Valencia we should have a big update where there will be a lot of new parts on the car. But it is true from the fact point of view that the bits we tried to put in place were not enough to cope with the pace of the development that the biggest teams have done.”

And that is the trap Ferrari finds itself in. It is also clear that the technical team at Maranello isn’t strong enough, particularly in developing a car, compared to McLaren. There are reinforcements on the way to beef up the department, but Ferrari has to really dig deep now to get back in the game. Alonso knows that better that anyone. McLaren’s ability to develop a car was the reason he went to the team in 2007.

Meanwhile it is to be noted that Mosley rather soured Ferrari’s 800th Grand Prix celebrations by accusing the team of trying to fix an appeal court hearing.

Coming a year after F1 was embroiled in the fixing scandal over the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, this is uncomfortable ground.
“He (Montezemolo) was on the phone every day saying, ‘you have got to sort the Court of Appeal out and make sure we win’,” Mosley, referring to Ferrari’s charismatic president, is quoted by the Daily Mail.

“He didn’t put it as baldly as that but that is what he said. I said, ‘Luca, I’m sorry, but first of all they wouldn’t take any notice and secondly I am not going to do it’,” he added.

A spokesman for the famous Maranello based team responded: “We don’t want to make any comment. It is better to look ahead and not waste time talking about what is – luckily – old and gone.”

A three times winner of the Istanbul race, this is a weekend when he needs to show that he still has it in him to take Ferrari to the winner’s circle and to run his team mate Fernando Alonso close. If Red Bull still has a big margin over the rest, as is expected, then Massa’s minimum task is to beat Alonso.

Massa: The heat is on in Turkey (Darren Heath)

“I hope everything will work well, the tyres especially, ” said Massa on the Ferrari.com website. “If everything works perfectly I think we can have a competitive car. It’s a track which I love to race on, I enjoy driving this track and I won three times in five races.”

Massa’s recent performances have been rather tentative. He was given a new chassis, but in Spain he never found the sweet spot and was off the pace.

Whatever anybody says to the contrary, the arrival of Alonso has certainly changed his world and it appears that Massa is struggling to breathe in the team when Alonso is skilled at consuming much of the air.

As well as the psychological side, there is also a technical reason for his mini-slump; he does seem to have a problem with the 2010 specification Bridgestone tyres, particularly the harder compounds. His competitiveness dropped off sharply in Spain once he fitted the harder tyre at the pit stop. Alonso seems to get more from the tyre.

In Istanbul this weekend the tyre allocation is the same as Spain, namely the soft and hard compounds, the hardest in the range. This is due to the demands of the notorious multi apex Turn 8, which puts a huge load in the tyre, particularly the front right. Massa’s long runs on the tyre will be scrutinised carefully to see if he and the team have found a set up solution.

Massa’s job in Spain was also made harder by the way he had to move his left hand away from the wheel to control the switch for the F Duct rear wing. According to Gazzetta dello Sport, Massa has his steering wheel more advanced than Alonso and so his hand had to travel further to operate the switch.

This weekend Ferrari will have a revised version of its drag reducing rear wing. The team has modified the driver management system so that instead of the driver activating the switch to cut drag by closing a valve using the outside of his hand, he now uses his knee, like the McLaren drivers.

But there is also additional modification to make sure that the wing still works to its maximum potential when it is switched “off”. In Spain the team found that, while improving straight line speed, it also harmed the overall downforce of the car in medium and high speed corners. Like the KERS system the team had last year, a system which was supposed to improve competitiveness actually made the car more difficult to drive.

Nicolas Todt, Massa’s manager said that he is optimistic that his man will renew his deal at Ferrari, for which he receives a retainer of around €12 million per season. But it is known that Ferrari is studying Robert Kubica’s form, the Pole is a favourite of FIAT boss Sergio Marchionne. There has been talk of Mark Webber being under examination as well, but recently it seems that he is moving closer to a renewal with Red Bull.

Massa is known to have taken soundings with Red Bull and Renault about a seat for 2011 should his contract not be renewed.

Todt also underlined that the team is working to resolve Massa’s issue with the tyres and that people shouldn’t rush to judgement on him just yet,
“We’ve seen that in races with supersoft tyres Felipe has been level with Alonso, like in Monaco and Bahrain,” said Todt in Autosprint magazine.

“The truth is that he has problems with hard tyres, because the car doesn’t have enough load for his driving style and he struggles more to control the car compared with Alonso.”

In the interview he deals with Alonso’s recent mistakes, hints at some possible changes in the team and says that Ferrari wants to go back to using its Fiorano test track. He also reveals that Ferrari has saved 30% this year compared to its budget of two years ago before the teams got serious on cost cutting.

On the subject of Alonso he says that he’s delighted with him both on and off the track, “He has team spirit, he’s conscientious and has attachment to the team.”

Asked about the series of mistakes Alonso has made, most recently the practice accident in Monaco, which wrecked his chances of victory, Montezemolo says, “I only consider the Monaco one, where he was being over confident,” he says. “He wanted to test the limits, thinking about the pole and he made a mistake. The jump start in China was down to tension. But we are in good shape for the world championship. It’s still open.”

There have been a lot of rumours lately about the management of the F1 team, in particular the technical management, with suggestions that this side could soon be strengthened. Montezemolo’s answer seems coded here and suggests that some new names could be coming in on the technical or operational side to inject some discipline. he says that he has no plans to change, “the highest levels, no. But at the middle levels we leave the door open for the arrival of some new professionalism. It’s a stimulus.”

As for the future, Montezemolo talks about the current discussions regarding getting rid of Fridays during Grand Prix weekends. It’s been discussed many times before. The promoters don’t like it because it cuts down their opportunities to gain revenue but the teams feel that the complete testing ban has possibly been a wrong route.

Ferrari gave up the most when it signed up to the testing ban as it owned both the Fiorano test track next door to the F1 factory and Mugello, a demanding circuit in Tuscany.

“”We need tests to experiment, especially those of us who transfer technology from road to car. We want to go back to using Fiorano in which we have invested a lot. We are constructors, not people who race for a hobby.”

There is only a brief mention of Felipe Massa, who has come back from injury this season, but who has not been performing as well as expected. His place at the team appears under threat. Montezemolo usually throws out some encouraging noises in this kind of situation, support for his driver followed by a call to action. He says that for Massa to keep his place next season he should continue to work with the same spirit, thinking of himself and the team.” It’s hard to draw too many conclusions from this, other than that Ferrari doesn’t want to talk about Massa’s position at the moment. Remember that at the start of the year there was all the talk of Alonso and Massa being required to work for the team and not themselves.

Fourth place at Monaco was a confidence building result for Massa, but tempered by the fact that the team was targeting pole position and the win and felt it had the car to do it – or at least beat everyone except Webber.

I’ll post separately on Massa and his task this weekend.

Monaco is normally a frustrating race for team strategists.

Qualifying is so important, it sets the tone for the race and only the start and the sole pit stop give any real opportunity to gain track positions. That said, a safety car at the right moment can make a big difference and this is what happened for Fernando Alonso.

For the rest, the start was decisive in the battle between Robert Kubica and Sebastian Vettel, while the timing of the pit stop led to some changes among the big names too. So let’s look into some of the key decisions.

Alonso: Safety car helped a lot (Darren Heath)

Also Alonso was obliged to stop at least once due to the rule requiring every driver to use both types of Bridgestone tyre.

Alonso’s plan was to start the race on the supersoft tyre, then switch to hard tyres on the first lap and run the rest of the race on one set of tyres.

The reason the team chose not to try the opposite strategy and run long on the hard tyre from the start was in case a safety car should come out at the wrong moment and compromise them.

Ironically it was a safety car that made it for him. The accident at the start really played into Ferrari’s hands. It allowed Alonso to make his tyre stop and not lose any time doing so. He was able to join the tail of the pack behind the safety car before the restart and then it was a question of passing the slow cars as quickly as possible and keeping the gap to the cars he was hoping to race to less than 25 seconds, the time it would take them to pit and rejoin the race.

By lap 18 he was up to 16th place and only 17 seconds behind the fifth place car. Hamilton, who was fifth in the opening stint, had just pitted and emerged in front of him, so Alonso knew that he had a chance to be sixth when all the cars had pitted. And so it proved.

Many of the cars ahead of him played into his hands, stopping in the next few laps.

But there were places to be won and lost to other drivers by mistiming the stop, so how did the teams decide?

The teams have a more sophisticated timing system than the one available to the public and media. It divides the lap into ten sectors, rather than the basic three and this gives them a much faster evaluation of the way the tyres are behaving. Rather than wait 20 odd seconds to find out whether they are going off, they can tell every 8 seconds how the performance is going.

Engineers and computers study the trends and make the strategy calls based on what they see.

This works in two ways; it tells them the precise moment when their soft tyres are dropping off and by reading the sectors of cars already on the hards, they can see what performance gain rivals are experiencing.

Hamilton was the first to pit and his lap times went from 1m 19.7s to 1m 17.6s. Rival engineers could see immediately the speed advantage he was getting from his new tyres.

Massa was the driver most at risk from Hamilton’s early switch to hard tyres, having been only 3 seconds ahead in the opening stint. He duly pitted at the end of lap 19, as soon as the Ferrari team saw the pace Hamilton had in the early stages of lap 19. Five others followed suit.

Massa held onto his fourth position thanks to the quick thinking and analysis of the Ferrari engineers.

For others it was too late. Barrichello and Schumacher were in Alonso’s sights and he jumped both of them when they pitted on lap 19. However Schumacher also jumped Barrichello with another lightening-fast Mercedes pit stop.

Liuzzi lost out to Sutil (Darren Heath)

Liuzzi had outqualified Sutil for the first time this season and ran ahead of him for the first 19 laps of the race. Like many others he saw the pace of Hamilton on the new hard tyre and stopped on lap 19. At the time Sutil was one lap behind.

Sutil had nothing to lose by trying something different. He decided that his soft tyres still had life in them and opted to come in three laps later. With Liuzzi out of the way, he started going one second per lap faster, setting the fastest lap either of them had done to that point.

Even though his stop was a second slower than Liuzzi’s he had still done enough to jump him at the stop.

Sutil’s instinct was proved right, the old soft tyres did have something left to give, it was a brave decision and it paid off.

Conversely the tactic did not work for Nico Rosberg. He was trying to get ahead of his team mate Michael Schumacher, who stopped on lap 19 and Rubens Barrichello. Rosberg stayed out until lap 28, the last of the major runners to pit. He had 22 seconds over Schumacher at one point, but a couple of slow laps prevented him from getting to the magic 25 second margin he needed. Unlike Sutil, the gamble did not pay off.