Formula One: Upturn in fortunes puts spring in Ferrari step

Matt Majendie 03:17 30/03/2015
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  • He’s back: Vettel made the most of a competitive Ferrari car to secure victory at Sepang, in only his second race with the Prancing Horse.

    From the moment Ferrari showed searing pace in Jerez, the suggestion was the Prancing Horse might well be back with a bang. The sceptics argued it was no more than showboating from a team that had struggled for outright pace in recent seasons but yesterday’s events in Malaysia silenced the doubters with some style.

    Sebastian Vettel had said that Ferrari had a chance of winning but his body language suggested he did not entirely believe that was possible. The reality seemed that, unless Mercedes made an error, no one else was going to win.

    True, Mercedes were not quite their usual slick selves – seemingly riled by having a team breathing down their neck for the first time in a while – but that was frankly immaterial. Ferrari were impressive from start to finish of the weekend winning the race with room to spare.

    Ferrari had a tumultuous season in 2014. Two team principals came and went in Stefano Domenicali and Marco Mattiacci, engineering director Pat Fry left as did chief designer Nikolas Tombazis, while star driver Fernando Alonso, around who the team was built in the mould of Michael Schumacher, decided enough was enough and headed across the grid to McLaren-Honda.

    Plus there was the not so insignificant matter of Luca di Montezemolo stepping down after a lengthy and successful tenure as president and chairman. Having failed to finish with a McLaren woefully down on power and reliability, how enviously Alonso must now be looking across at his former team.

    Fernando Alonso struggled on his first outing for McLaren.

    There is no denying that Ferrari have made greater strides in improving than any other team on the grid and have closed the gap markedly on Mercedes (it was Mercedes’ first loss since last year’s Belgian GP) – though the defending champions are expected to be back to the fore at subsequent races.

    So how exactly have Ferrari turned things around from a team in disarray to race winners and potential championship challengers?

    Maurizio Arrivabene has done something of a shake-up since taking over at the helm in November, with Ferrari chairman Sergi Marchionne heralding the former Philip Morris boss and ex-F1 commission member as having a “thorough understanding not just of Ferrari but also of the governance mechanisms and requirements of the sport”.

    But in truth the moves in the right direction had already begun with the highly rated James Allison, who understood the team’s machinations having worked for it previously for five years before joining Renault, moving back at the end of 2013.

    Sebastian Vettel drove Ferrari to an unexpected win.

    His main remit as technical boss was to get the engine and chassis departments working more closely together to avoid the overall concept design disparities that had bedevilled the team previously.

    Much has been made of the improvements in the Ferrari power unit and there is no denying that has happened but Allison has argued that the improvement is a 50-50 split between the engine and the overall chassis package of this year’s car. The lack of qualifying speed was there to see all last season, Alonso constantly on the back foot as a result come the races.

    The change in speed, says Allison, is down to a more aggressive engine approach plus, among other things, a redeveloped exhaust concept enabling them to harvest more energy from the MGU-H (its exhaust engine recovery system).

    In all, the team have left no stone unturned, typified by the fact that at every practice session in Sepang the team did test pitstops on the Ferraris of Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen.

    Sure, Mercedes are still the leading team on the grid but Vettel was able to split the two Mercs on the podium, which brings us to the four-time world champion.

    Last year, the critics lined up to suggest Vettel had solely been the happy recipient of a superb Red Bull in the past four seasons as he struggled alongside new team-mate Daniel Ricciardo. But that myth has been thoroughly dispelled.

    The smile is back and there have been echoes of Michael Schumacher, of a new era and the team being built around a new star. The team had warned it would take time for everyone to properly reap the rewards as it had done for Schumacher but that has not proved the case, Vettel winning in only his second attempt in the red overalls.

    Niki Lauda had warned on the eve of the race that “Ferrari are coming”. In Malaysia, they have done just that by lighting a spark in what had appeared a thoroughly one-sided world championship.

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