Today was a real vindication of the decision taken last summer by Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali to stop development of the 2009 car and throw everything at the 2010 model. The Ferrari was the best car overall this weekend in various conditions. It was quick on the single lap, quick on the soft tyre at the start of the race when the car was heavy and quick on the medium tyre in the second part of the race as the fuel load lightened. The Red Bull may have been quicker in the soft tyre parts of that, but when the More…

I had breakfast this morning with Ferrari’s Stefano Domenicali in his office at the track. Well, he invited me for breakfast, but to Italians that means coffee. The conversation was wide ranging and covered Michael Schumacher’s defection to Mercedes, the new teams, the financial situation in F1 and the serious problem of who will supply tyres to F1 next season. On Schumacher he said that that it felt “strange” to be racing against him and that he had not yet seen his former colleague at the track, but that he intended to today. “Racing against Ross and Michael is difficult; More…

Ferrari has launched an astonishing attack on Max Mosley, the FIA under his management and the whole new teams adventure, which has changed F1 pretty substantially in the last 12 months. Last season we got increasingly used to feisty posts on the Ferrari site, which posted a record 300 million page impressions in 2009. Before Monaco there was a stinging put down of the aspirant new teams, implying that if they came in the series would be no better than GP3. Now they have gone a stage further. The cars and freight will be sent for the first race in More…

The third official test starts tomorrow. Analysing the lap time sheets from last week in Jerez, it is clear that the front running teams have already begun experimenting with the tyres and how to use them in qualifying and the race. This is critical this year because the fastest ten cars will have to start the race on their qualifying tyres so it’s essential to make sure you pick the right one. The work done by Ferrari and Mercedes last week in particular gives us some clues about how the race weekends might play out and it tells us a More…

Ferrari technical director Aldo Costa says that the new Ferrari is on target as the numbers they got from the first track test this week in Spain correlated with the figures that they had from the wind tunnel. Ferrari were on top throughout the three days in Valencia, largely due to running lower fuel loads the their main opposition, McLaren and Mercedes. Close analysis of the lap times shows that Alonso was slightly faster than Massa at this first test, based on estimated, fuel corrected times. Alonso ran mainly 2009 levels of fuel, whereas Massa also spent a little time More…

Felipe Massa is set to test a 2008 Ferrari at Barcelona on Friday. He will take the car over from Valentino Rossi, who has been enjoying another taste of F1 power this week. Ferrari are able to do this because the car is now two years old, which is the embargo set by the testing committee to protect against new technology. The car is now part of the stable of cars managed by Ferrari’s F1 Clienti department, which looks after old F1 cars for its wealthy customers. No other team does this and it’s quite an undertaking to maintain all More…

Ferrari is hosting its annual media and sponsor event in the Italian ski resort Madonna di Campiglio this week and that means that there will be plenty of Ferrari-related headlines for the next few days. Today it was the turn of team principal Stefano Domenicali to speak. He talked about Ferrari’s need to get back to the front of the grid, he spoke about the importance of fuel consumption this season, now that refuelling is banned and he talked about history, recent history. “Let’s not forget Fernando is the only driver on the track who in his career has beaten More…

Nick Fry perpetuated the rumours about Michael Schumacher making a comeback with his team as he spoke to the press today after his appearance at the Motor Sport Business Forum in Monaco. He declined to comment on whether the team was talking to the 41 year old and said that they had a shortlist of “3 or 4 drivers”. He said that nationality wasn’t important because Mercedes already has a German driver but he said that experience was vitally important. They may announce the identity of Nico Rosberg’s team mate this year but it would more likely be next year. More…

Fernando Alonso today took his first bow as a Ferrari driver, appearing at the Ferrari finals day in Valencia. A crowd in excess of 17,000 turned up at the Riccardo Tormo circuit to see Alonso and his 2010 team mate Felipe Massa and to watch the final rounds of some of the key Ferrari championships featuring 129 drivers from around the world. When it was announced earlier in the year that this important day in the Ferrari calendar would take place in Spain, it was yet more proof that a deal to take Alonso to Ferrari was in the pipeline, More…

Shell, in its capacity as a partner of Ferrari stretching back some 450 races, has issued an interesting Q & A with Michael Schumacher in which he talks about comebacks and says that if he had his time again he would do a few things differently; not least avoiding the collision with Jacques Villeneuve in Jerez 1997 which severely damaged his reputation. This week Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has reiterated his desire to see Schumacher race a Ferrari again, should all the new teams, so derided by Ferrari, fail to make it onto the grid and teams be required More…

No-one here in on Yas Island this weekend is left in any doubt about the relationship between Ferrari and Abu Dhabi. The team has Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi investment vehicle, as one of its significant partners and the gigantic Ferrari World theme park dominates the skyline next to the circuit. The TV pictures tell a story of a track virtually owned by Ferrari. All of Ferrari’s top brass are here too; president Luca di Montezemolo is here along with Piero Ferrari, Enzo’s son and John Elkann, the nephew of FIAT patriarch Gianni Agnelli. But on track it has been a More…

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has stirred up the Ferrari driver situation again by saying that while Felipe Massa’s position at Ferrari is assured for next year, Kimi Raikkonen’s is not. “We will have a Brazilian driver, who deserves another chance, seeing as he’s well. As for the rest, we are thinking about the best choice, but we still have time. We will decide in a few weeks.” This is a different line from the one he took at Monza two weeks ago, at the announcement of Santander’s five year sponsorship deal, where he appeared to be suggesting that the More…

There is a draft 2010 calendar doing the rounds this weekend. It’s an 18 race calendar and it starts with Bahrain because Australia needs to be scheduled for a date after the clocks go forward to shorten up the time difference and make the race time in Europe later. Turkey will be chilly in April, I’m ecstatic to see Montreal back as it is a great venue, a wonderful city and one of the best supported races of the year with a huge, knowledgeable crowd all three days. Valencia moves to June, when it will be cooler (thank Heavens!), The More…