How can Ferrari, with all their millions of dollars and technical expertise, make such a balls of it? They had the quickest car in Melbourne (hard to believe, I know) and sheer incompetence resulted in them leaving the season-opener with only a solitary World Championship point.
McLaren were more methodical and better organised than the Scuderia, which is why Lewis Hamilton – sublime though his performance was – took such a convincing win. For Ferrari to bounce back, they need to understand their three major failings.
1) After such a promising winter, why were their F2008s plagued by balance problems at Albert Park? Nothing that their engineers changed seemed to rectify the situation and a degree of panic had set in by race morning.
2) Why were both cars so grotesquely unreliable? Raikkonen had to start from 16th after an electronic glitch brought his qualifying session to a premature end on Saturday, and both drivers retired from the race with engine failures.
3) What was wrong with the drivers? Massa we know about: he’s always been inconsistent, and while it was disappointing to see him spin at the first corner, it wasn’t wholly unexpected. Raikkonen, on the other hand, is a genius and he was distinctly below par all weekend. His two spins in the race had the hallmarks of a rookie, not a $50m-a-year world champion.
None of these problems are insurmountable for a team with Ferrari’s resources. They’ve already flown the failed V8s to Maranello for examination ahead of next weekend’s Malaysian GP and their seven-post rig has been working round the clock to overcome the balance issues. And we know Raikkonen can do the job when he has the car underneath him.
On paper, there’s no reason why Raikkonen can’t disappear into the distance at the next race. To make that a reality, however, Ferrari must start acting like an F1 team, not a Formula 3 team.