Friday: Does Ferrari need the sun to shine?

Stefano Domenicali admits that the decision to stop the development of the single-seater, the F60, might explain their laborious start this Friday in Singapore. The reigning world champion team froze the development of its car at the beginning of August and has been fully concentrating on the next season since then. Ferrari’s best period this season will certainly be the series of 5 consecutive podiums by Kimi Räikkönen in the last races, with the highlight being a victory at Spa-Francorchamps.

Most of the teams continue to develop their cars and have brought many updates to their single-seaters, particularly BMW, Force India, Williams, Brawn GP, and Red Bull. As a result, Stefano Domenicali fears that Ferrari may slowly begin to sink outside the top 10 for the remainder of the season.

Giancarlo Fisichella – 17th and 16th:

« It was quite a difficult first day. The car is very nervous, and we don’t have the ideal setup yet. Now, I need to discuss with the team to try to prepare as well as possible for qualifying and the race. My goal is to improve on my results from Monza, but I know it won’t be easy. The track was very slippery, and a few times I experienced graining on my tires. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do long stints on the softs due to the red flag caused by Webber, as this compound was significantly faster by 3 or 4 tenths. But the question remains about their consistency? »

Kimi Räikkönen – 9th and 14th:

This was a Friday like any other today. We had many small incidents with the car, but after all, we were able to follow our schedule. There are still many questions to resolve, including the onboard fuel: we will see tomorrow what we can carry in qualifying. Today it is still too early to say if we will be able to fight for a podium like in recent races. The soft tires seem to be faster and it will get better as the track improves…

Chris Dyer:

Today’s performance was nothing exciting. The interruption of FP2 complicated our schedule, but in the end, we gathered enough data to prepare well for qualifying and the race. Tomorrow, our goal will be to get both cars into Q3 (top 10): it won’t be easy, but we will do our best.

« Concerning the tires, both soft and hard components seem to degrade quickly… which makes the preference choice difficult to make. I think, therefore, that several different strategies will be employed tomorrow in qualifying by the competitors. »