Ferrari told their fans today that they will not be forgetting about their qualifying pace. Although the two Ferrari drivers qualified in 2nd and 3rd in Malaysia, their time was still 1 second off pole sitter Sebastian Vettel in his Red Bull.
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TheMotorReport
Red Bull have been dominating the qualification sessions, in Malaysia both of their drivers saved an extra pair of tyre's, compared to the majority of the field. However in Australia, Lotus proved that with the new Pirelli compounds for 2013, maintaining your tyre's can lead to victories in comparison to pushing hard on your tyre's to achieve a good starting place.
But Ferrari's chief designer Pat fry says that managing the tyre life is no reason to ignore his team's lack of qualifying pace.
"We've shown reasonable race pace and on all the tyre types we have used so far we have performed well," Fry told
AutoSport. "However we still have a way to go to be quickest in qualifying and we are working very hard on that at the moment. We've been concentrating on the longer runs, even if they are not as long as in the past, because this year we expect more pitstops during a race. However, we have not ignored our qualifying pace. I am sure there is more to come on this front, as we learn more about our car and start getting the best out of it."
Fry is certain that the 'leaders' in the development war will be shown in the qualifying sessions. Fry is also sure that Ferrari's changes to their Research and Development team gives them the best change of adding speed this year, compared to recent years.
"The key will be to try and move our car development programme forward quicker than the other teams do," said Fry. "It's a tough cycle that will last all year and we need to at least match our 2012 development pace if we are to perform better in qualifying. So far we have worked well, all the way through from design to manufacture, improving on how we did things last year in terms of actually getting new bits onto the car. Also, our aero correlation is better."
Average qualifying positions
2010 2011 2012 2013*
Ferrari: 6.8 4.9 8.0 3.5
Red Bull: 2.3 2.4 5.5 2.3
* After the opening two races
