diffuser wrote:
I agreed with you on this point earlier. In retrospec I feel this statement is to vague. I beleive that a more accurate answer is (and this is scary for 2013 as Stefano has said for 2013 we start with the F2012) they don't know what wrong. Only that they couldn't figure it out.
Here
http://en.espnf1.com/ferrari/motorsport ... 96538.html
He said
"You correctly say that we did not have the fastest car, above all at the beginning of the season then maybe in the second half of the season we were not able to improve the car. For sure this is something we need to work harder in order to improve it, and we have of course got ideas because we know where we lack [performance] and of course we also know that unfortunately we're paying a big price in qualifying that hurts our performance in the race."
I disagree mate. I think the F2012 hit it's development peak mid season whereas other teams were able to continue to develop their cars right to the end of the season.
When Domenicali speaks of not improving the car, he's talking about cutting the gap to rivals. As I said first after summer break Ferrari only brought small refinements to the car. The small refinements definitely worked because others continued to bring updates yet the gap to them remained consistent. So while they didn't dramatically improve the car towards the end of the season, the small refinements helped to maintain the gap.
As mentioned in a previous post, I believe in order to seriously cut the gap to RB & McLaren it would have necessitated a redesign of much of the car, something Ferrari didn't have time to do. Therefore IMHO, the F2012 hit it's development peak early.
I think they definitely do have a decent understanding of the car simply because the others were bringing updates, large ones yet the gap to Ferrari never really increased, which tells me most of the small refinements worked. And in order for them to work, Ferrari would need to understand how to improve which it did albeit slightly.
