With many of the F1 personnel heading inter-continental, news yesterday and today is a little slow. But here we go anyway.
Ferrari admit they’re in trouble: Marc Gene at a publicity event for Shell Motorsport in Madrid today says the team have a number of upgrades for the Indian GP. He has been testing them in the simulator but is uncertain as to their effectiveness. He admits they will not know whether the upgrades work or not until they try them out on track on Friday. The most troubling comment was, “In India we will take a number of improvements to the cars, but they will not be a revolution, but we hope to help”. (as.com) Playing down the upcoming Indian GP Gene adds, “Each of the next four races will be important but not decisive in itself.”
The problem Ferrari face is their recent lap times relative to Red Bull. In Singapore and Japan, their best time for the weekend was around 1% slower than Red Bulls, and although they closed this to 0.3% in Korea the kind of upgrades Gene is talking about will at best close the gap and of course Red Bull will not be standing still. To win in India, Alonso most likely needs to qualify on the front row and with the weather set fair this will be a huge ask.
