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Linksheaven 2006 F1 Preview: Ferrari

March 6th, 2006

1st annual linksheaven.com

formula 1 preview - 2006

Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro

Team

Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro

Nationality

Italy

Engine

Ferrari V-8

Tires

Bridgestone

Team Principal

Jean Todt

Team Website

http://www.ferrariworld.com/

Sponsors

Marlboro, Shell, Fiat, Olympus

2005 Results

Driver’s	3rd
Constructors	3rd

Drivers

Driver

Michael Schumacher

Nationality

Germany

2005 Results

3rd

Website

www.mschumacher.com

Driver

Felipe Massa

Nationality

Brazil

2005 Results

13th

Website

www.felipemassa.com

test

Driver

Luca Badoer

Nationality

Italy

2005 Results

Ferrari Test Driver

Website

www.lucabadoer.com

test

Driver

Marc Gene

Nationality

Spain

2005 Results

Ferrari Test Driver

Website

www.marcgene.com

2006 Outlook

Once the towering juggernauts above all else, winning six straight constructors titles and 5 straight drivers crowns with Michael Schumacher, the team had not lost a title this millennium until Renault beat them last season. On the technical side of things, it was nowhere near just Renault defeating the once mighty giants: the tires blew (literally), the wheels came off, and all crumbled around them. It was as if the team collectively took a long drive off a very short cliff. After struggling to accomplish anything last season, and winning just a single time at the joke of all jokes known as the USGP (Only 6 cars competed after all Michelin runners withdrew on the formation lap) and after spending months scratching their heads and listening to the media blame their car, the Bridgestone tires, and Michael Schumacher, they picked up the pieces and went back to work.
It is popular in F1 winter testing for a team to use the previous years’ chassis as an interim car with modified parts. For this season it was also used as a test sled for the new engines as soon as possible. Ferrari’s 2005 challenger dubbed F2005 was such a disaster however that they never used it, opting to use the world beating F2004 (the 2004 challenger) to do the work. The 2006 car, the 248 F1, has not nearly come out and rattled the world either. It’s shown some progress of improvement over last seasons’ car, but its pace has only been good to mediocre, and the reliability has recently been quite a bother if you’re a backer of the reds. The car carries the same drop bar on the front wing, but the rest of the wing and the rest of the car is quite different, and in Ferrari’s estimation reasonably radical. The balance does seem to be there, and Schumacher, who has done the vast majority of the driving of the car in the winter, seems pretty pleased with the feel of it and the overall potential of the car.
Engine vibration and cooling are two major troubles so far for the 056 V8, but despite all that it is highly rated by its competitors as a strong engine. Strength is a fairly relative term though, as in a test at Bahrain that was supposed to last 9 days and just shy of 3 weeks left to the season, they broke nearly every spare part they had in the trouble areas, and were heavily hampered by stoppages on most of the days. That is what testing is for, but not how you want it to go, so as the season looms, large questions about whether Ferrari can build a winning car again and maybe just as large a question of whether or not Bridgestone can build a winning tire this season, are still far from being answered by the winters’ activity.
In 2005, Ferrari started the season with Michael Schumacher partnered by Rubens Barrichello. We all know the position the #2 Ferrari driver perennially finds himself in, so this was never an exciting prospect. Although to Rubens’ credit it ended 12-7 in both qualifying and races to the German. Closer than some might expect.
This season Rubens has decided he’s done taking orders and has gone to Honda. Good for him, and in pre-season testing he looks to have already caught up with our Jenson. Meanwhile back at Ferrari, little Felipe Massa has come in from the now defunct Sauber team. The Brazilian has long been linked with a race seat at Ferrari, ever since he entered F1 with Sauber in fact. In Massa we have someone who showed great speed and promise from early on, although unlike Sato he has recently managed to reign in his crazy ways. Last season he bashed Jacques Villeneuve 13-6 in qualifying and 13-5 in races (they didn’t race in the US) so he comes to Ferrari in good form..even if he only beat Jacques by 2 WDC points.
It remains to be seen whether he has the temperament to play 2nd fiddle to Schumacher in quite the way Barrichello did, but in my opinion it also remains to be seen whether that will be an issue at all. It will take him time to settle in at Ferrari and start setting the kind of times that will require a “move over” command from Todt. No, Michael will have a pretty comfortable time of it this season within his own team, which is just as well really, because if Ferrari are to get back to where they feel they belong, Michael will need to be concentrating 100% on his opponents, not his teammate.

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Entry Filed under: Formula 1, Linksheaven

3 Comments Add your own

1. c0rrde | March 7th, 2006 at 10:08 am

surely the results should be constructors 3rd
drivers 3rd in the top section
2. bluenose | March 7th, 2006 at 3:44 pm

Spell checker didn’t catch that..
3. Patrick | March 8th, 2006 at 5:18 am

Yes c0rrde, 3rd & 3rd. Fixed…and no, spell check did not catch that one….;-)

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Linksheaven 2006 F1 Preview: Ferrari

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