I think Ferrari would be better served to keep quiet and keep working.

I don't realistically see how any team will catch Mercedes this year. And even if a team were to find enough pace to challenge Mercedes at some point this year, I think Merc will be too far ahead on points in the championship for them to lose either title.

it seems they publish such a letter after every race, maybe that's for the members

Luca was talking to Kimi too


also what were Alonso and LdM there "working together" ? and apparently it wasn't that nice as Luca first had to throw Alonso's physio out of the room

by Lorenzo de Luca

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There was no need to wait for Bahrain to assert that the F14-T was not the best car on the grid. We’ve already discussed about the lack of performance of the 059/3, now it’s time to talk about the other areas in which Ferrari have failed once again this year.

During the race both Fernando and Kimi struggled. Not only on the straights on which they were overtaken with ease by Williams, Force India and Red Bull; but they also struggled with managing the tires. This is a consequence of the non-optimum power delivery, which induces the rear tires to slide, hence leading to a significantly reduced tire life.

Also the Ferrari had a problem with corner entry, a sign of a lack of downforce at the front. If over a single lap in qualifying, the fastest Ferrari was 2.3 seconds slower – race pace demonstrated the situation is critical – as the fastest Ferrari was still 1.2 seconds slower. This is an enormity and in addition we could easily talk about the failure by Ferrari – that after three races the engine is last in terms of performance.

There are upgrades planned for China and Spain but these are unlikely to help reduce such a wide gap. Something needs to be done because as we saw with Red Bull – Ferrari’s opponents are improving quickly.

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translated by Nicole

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From Iltalehti paper edition:

Underpowered rhinitis pump

Ferrari has the worst engine in the F1-circus, Janne Palomäki claims.

Ferrari hired Kimi Räikkönen because of the sport's transition phase. Kimi's job was to deliver his own strong vision of the car development.

F1-regulations have traditionally made engines pretty much equal and the differences on the track were due to aerodynamic characteristics. Hence Red Bull's superiority during the recent years can be explained.

They thought in Maranello that Räikkönen and Fernando Alonso would be the best duo in helping the team to develop driving qualities. The duo's experience was going to reflect in Ferrari's WC-points.

* A great chain of thinking, which however didn't take one surprising factor in consideration. In 2014 the F1-engines wouldn't be equally strong anymore.

And Ferrari seems to have the weakest engine of them all.

It's obvious that Mercedes has spent most money on developing their engine. It's even more obvious that it was a brilliant investment. Force India seemed to be as strong as Mercedes on long straights in Bahrain. Checo Pérez took the 3rd podium and Nico Hülkenberg wasn't far behind him with 5th position. Even the Williams-cars moved faster than the Ferrari-cars.

Alonso complained after Saturday qualification that the engine powers dropped in the middle of his fast lap. Pat Fry confirmed later on that certain meters confirmed Alonso's gut feeling. Of course they didn't talk about any precise diagnosis: the computer showed that "some parameters went up and down" mysteriously.

It showed in the race on Sunday: Ferrari's engines still lack at least as much powers than they lacked in the two previous races. At times it looked like Alonso and Räikkönen was driving with heavy fuel oil while the others used high-octane gasoline.

Slow. Painfully slow.

* The essence of the problem is that due to the new regulations the development of engines are frozen. Räikkönen and Alonso can polish the frontwing's angle but they can't magically create more horse powers.

The job looks hopeless. It would be humiliating to put up the white flag after only three races and of course it can't be done because of sponsors' hopes for success.

–We didn't come here to get only one or two points, but we knew this would be a difficult race, Alonso told TV-cameras after the race ended.

–We stay here for a few days to test so that we can improve. We still don't know what the reason for Saturday's happenings was. In the start it felt like the engine would lack power but it worked 100% during the race.

Ferrari has placed the responsibility of testing on Alonso. It's difficult to say how much even he can do if the "100 %" engine leaves Ferrari-drivers seconds behind Force India -drivers.

* After only three races we can't make any conclusions about the drivers' motivation to work. It's clear that neither Alonso or Räikkönen won't drive only in ecstacy of the speed anymore. Both need chances in races if they want to win.

It's practically impossible that Ferrari's F14 T would develop to challenge Mercedes GP. It's difficult to believe that it would even catch up with Force India.

Of course it was known beforehand that Bahrain's track profile doesn't suit Ferrari. Despite of that it should have been able to do much better. Positions 9 and 10 tell in their own gruesome way about the changes in F1 and why they called Räikkönen back to Italy.

Season 2014 is a real deal breaker in F1:s history. They already talk about the year when Ferrari fell behind the top speed with an underpowered car.

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http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/formula1/26961345

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A spokesman said: "The kerb impact in FP1 caused some local damage which we repaired during the weekend, but it has now become clear that there was also some consequential damage, unseen over the remainder of the weekend.

"This damage became only apparent this morning, and we stopped running on a precautionary basis in order to fix the chassis."

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they can fix it and they have other chassis too so there is no worry about next race.
It's not good but it's really not the first time than chassis damages aren't noticed right away, happened all teams. and apparently that damage now got bigger with more running so that they noticed only now.

every time i take a look at the web, theres another joke about the slow ferrari....