Reliability focused on the Ferrari debriefing

With all the team members having returned from Sepang where the Malaysian GP took place, Ferrari’s Chairman Luca di Montezemolo, team-boss Stefano Domenicali and the technicians gathered for the traditional debriefing. One of the main issues focused on the meeting was the lack of reliability that the Scuderia’s engines have been showing.

Disappointment is the best word to express the feelings at Ferrari after a bad performance in last weekend’s Malaysian GP. After the mistake during Q1 the team wasn’t expecting anything more than to get into the scoring places. This objective was almost completely achieved as Felipe Massa reached seventh position, but Alonso’s retirement with two laps to go with an engine failure, took two points from the team.

Nevertheless, Ferrari still has some reasons to celebrate has the Scuderia is still leading the Constructors’ standings and has Massa and Alonso occupying first and second place in the drivers standings.

One of the main topics on the table during the meeting was the reliability. Besides the problem in the engine, Alonso’s car number 8 also had problems with the gearbox, which conditioned the Spaniard race since the formation lap. The problem in the engines also extended to Sauber, although the analysis confirmed that the problems on the Swiss cars didn't have anything to do with Alonso's engine failure.

The analysis also showed that the problem in Sepang didn’t have any connection to what happened in Bahrain GP, where Ferrari changed engines after the qualifying. Ferrari’s engineers think that the problem in Malaysia might have been cause by the gearbox problem, but conclusions can’t be made before they look closer at the engine.

Still, Ferrari is confident in its competitiveness, showed once again in Malaysia, but the team assures it will continue to work hard on improvements, having the Chinese Grand Prix already in mind.