AMuS published an interesting report about Ferrari:
Essentially:
************************
Ferrari and the strange Testing strategy:
Bluff or cautiousness?
Mercedes (Costa) thinks they are as fast as the laptimes show, i.e. 1 sec slower than them. They base this on GPS measurements they have done. (Btw, how can they measure other cars with GPS????)
He says that they ran a very strange test program and that Merc could not make any sense about their program and what they were doing.
AMuS thinks that Ferrari could not use constantly the 160 HP of the MGU-K, but usually used 120 HP. All in all they speculate that Ferrari gave away 1.5s because of the conservative engine settings (I assume they mean 1.5s during long runs).
Also, rumours are that Ferrari should be marginal with consumption. It seems now confirmed that Ferrari uses the MGU-K to blip the engine at downshifting.
An Expert: "You do that when you have consumption problems".
Mercedes thinks that this is a waste of electrical energy which could be brought to better use.
Toyota disagrees, they have investigated this for their LMP1 (Le Mans) program and say that doing it electrically has no negative effects and is the best way for the gearbox.
The theory that Ferrari is sandbagging is backed up by following:
- Andy Green of Force India is sure they are sandbagging
- Example Top Speed: In the last day, Alonso reached 339,6 km/h, way faster than the competition. The associated lap was rather slow, 1:35.509, 1.2s slower than his best 1:34.280
- Same story 2 days before: Alonso 338,5 km/h, with an associated lap of 1:40.634.
- And the same the other way around: In his absolute top lap Alonso reached only 308,5 km/h, over 30 km/h slower than what was possible. The Sector times in his fastest lap were not recorded, Ferrari mentioned transponder problems.
- No other team had so many empty data points in the sector time detection. And this in every testing day. Only at the start-finish line and at top speed measurements Ferrari could not hide anything, as this is not only measured with the transponder but also by other means. There are no empty data points with those measurements.
- Adding the best sector times of Alonso, measured officially by Ferrari, the quickest lap would be 1:35.559, 1,279 sec slower than his best lap, which is a "guaranteed" time.
**********************************
There are some unclear things in this report, though, but Ferrari clearly is an enigma.
Edit:
I forgot that AMuS says, Domenicali, Alonso and Räikönnen are surprisingly calm. Normally, with one second gap, the roof would already burn at Ferrari.
Also, in that interwiev when Domenicali admitted that they were behind Merc and Williams, after all microphones had been switched off, he added that the gap isn't that big and that they can close it.
