It has been a busy couple of weeks for the Ferrari team prior to the Singapore GP. It was announced that on October 13th Ferrari Formula One Chairman Luca di Montezemolo will be leaving his position with the team. He’s been in the position for the last 23 years and his departure marks the second domino to fall in the disaster that has been the Ferrari Formula One season. Earlier in the year Ferrari F1 boss Stefano Domencali stepped down to be replaced by new boss Marco Mattiacci. Di Montezemolo will be replaced by Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne next month.
On top of all this there is now the new radio ban, the rules of which are murky at best as far as what exactly can be said in certain situations. Oh yeah, that rule will also most likely be undergoing some more changes in the very near future.
So there are a couple more distractions for Ferrari to go along with the biggest distraction at the moment – their mediocre performance for this season. One of the bright spots in the season had been the fact that their number one driver, Fernando Alonso, had scored points in every grand prix leading up to Monza, the operative word being HAD. The streak ended in Monza when Alonso had a problem with the Energy Recovery System on his F14-T. Due to the mechanical failure it led to Ferrari’s number two, Kimi Raikkonen, being able to outperform his teammate for the second race in a row.
Alonso is not worried about the new radio ban, no matter how it shakes out. He claims the team mostly uses the radio to monitor temperatures and talk about traffic and strategy so he feels like they won’t be losing much of an edge by losing out on some of the chatter. The track in Singapore may see fuel consumption playing a role into the race on Sunday and that is one of the pieces of information that is now banned from being relayed to the driver but Alonso is still confident that it won’t be a problem. He claims there are many easy opportunities to save fuel in Singapore.
Raikkonen is probably even less concerned with the recent radio ban than his teammate. He’s not exactly known to be long winded and has even been caught telling his team director to leave him alone as he knows what he is doing so I think he’ll be pretty happy driving in radio silence. The Finn is still hoping to do whatever he can to get good results and improve the car as much as possible going forward. The good news for Ferrari is that even though mechanical grip hasn’t exactly been Ferrari’s strong suit this season, nothing really has actually, the lower speeds and twists and turns of the Singapore track lends a hand to the team where straight line speed has certainly been nothing to write home about.
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