“Communication errors and weather forecasting”

Last night, after the 6 Hours of Imola which saw three 499Ps dominate due to a completely wrong strategy, we took part in a meeting between Ferrari and the press. The discussion, held by the always available Giuliano Salvi whom we had met before, tried to give a preliminary explanation of the red defeat.

Giuliano Salvi: “I will start directly, with the question you all want to ask me, that is because we stayed in line. So, the information we had, which was clearly incorrect, was that the weather would only be temporary, with the pilots feeling that, except for a few seconds, it could be controlled, so they told us.. This did not end well, for now we have to review what happened in the chain of communication, it was obviously a mistake, I can’t talk about it otherwise, because obviously we can’t say it was a good call. We need to go through it, the situation was wrong, our idea is not to point the finger at the culprit, or something external, we are the same group that won Le Mans last year. We were there herowe are here zero. We will try to put all the data together and understand, why it is not known now. We have to distinguish strategy from machinewe tried to keep it but in the end we didn’t do it, we need to go through the procedures in depth.”

“Either way it’s a double fault. Because you misinterpreted the weather and more than that you didn’t differentiate your strategies.”

Salve: “Well, in a way. So, regarding the first question: it’s clear. On the second, we need to understand why the split strategy failed. I can’t tell you right now because I want to check the contact first. At the moment there is no time, maybe we will have an idea before the Trade. Obviously we will know what happened tomorrow evening. Let’s try to take the positive from this day, not that this is enough. But at least the car was not like in Qatar where we were not competitive, we worked on a car that, especially in the dry, behaved very well. We have to build from this, because maybe we worked more last year, for example by winning Le Mans, but really we are still a young teamat some point shit happense this is indeed a foolish day. The worst thing, in my opinion and in all of us, is that we feel sorry for all the fans, to all our people who were in Imola at the stand, and this is something that makes me feel very bad, and all the people here are like this, I saw people crying. We are ashamed and we apologize to all the people who came here to cheer us on. We have to do a better job. As we showed last year, we can do better.”

“When the cycle was drying you waited longer than others”

Salve: “I think so we made a return to slicks well, the cross it was correct. You can also see why we finally got the position back, you saw the end with Toyota. We did well in this aspect. Obviously we were wrong about the rest. Unfortunately the situation had already deteriorated, tomorrow morning we will definitely come to work to understand why it happened like this, and what we can do to improve it. I don’t want to go into more detail because some of the procedures are internal, about how we manage the team to improve. We will be powered by Business, 100%. I believe in the guys who have been working on this since tonight.”

“How did you manage to move forward in the raindrops?”

Salve: “Our car makes the tires work harder than othersso for some time he was able to stay in cross longer, the riders were also happy and saw that it was a chance to continue without stopping, unfortunately the weather went bad and this let us down”

“What was the crossing time?”

Salve: “I would not like to reveal the time, in any case the change of our compound was correct, the problem was related to the weather. We had some information, viz Our radar indicated that the situation was bad at first, but it wasn’t, so we began to distrust the radar, gave us the worst possible downpour before it happened. So we thought it was one of those cases where it wasn’t reliable, and that’s how the error happened. I don’t want to give full details, I don’t want to hide anything, it was a clear mistake on our part, which we will have to analyze. It’s something we still don’t fully understand.”

Do you think Ferrari is the fastest car today?”

Salve: “We were just pushing each other as usual. We were happy with the car. After Qatar we developed the car in the right direction. This is the worst thing, because the boys had worked it out and the pilots were happy, even when the song was starting to rain. The car was doing well. Even Porsche and Toyota were in the same fun. Toyota was a bit of a surprise, because we expected Porsche and Toyota behind us, but Toyota caught us in the race, we closed the folds of our thighs, and we were pushing each other. Why The three drivers were free to flee, so there was no management but the Toyota was still behind us, catching me. We expected to be close, they surprised me more in Qatar to be honest.”

“We saw a number of GT3s that managed to get through the wet part of the race by holding onto the decks, how did they do it and why couldn’t the Hypercars?”

Salve: “This is very interesting. ABS is definitely a factor, and then they have different tires, and different sizes. It’s something we discovered, their life was easier than with our Hypercars. Sometimes it is strange but it happens that GTs go faster.

“James (Calado) said on the radio that he didn’t want to go back and put wet tyres, so was it a team decision or did he change his mind?”

Salve: “James gave his vision, and I think the driver sometimes has a better understanding of the situation, sometimes not. We win together and we lose together, and so we’ll go into more detail with the pilots, but we’re all in the same boat. We lose together, we go to the podium together. Sure we had news, but sometimes it’s better and sometimes it’s worse, we are misreading the situation in some areas, this is clear, there is nothing to hide and we certainly do not want to do that, because this is how we improve. Otherwise you won’t go any faster. However, apart from the management of the situation which was minor to say the least, in terms of the car and development we worked well and I’m proud of the guys.”

“Was the decision to do triples with the drivers who started the race related to the fact that you expected the rain to arrive early?”

Salve: “Yes, that’s right. A very good question. Yes, we expected it to rain earlier, and we put our drivers who manage the tires well behind the wheel, because we wanted to go long with strategy, waiting for something (from the sky) that did not happen when we expected. And this he gave us wrong view of realityI hope I explained myself. Sometimes you look at something on the radar, it’s in the forecast, it’s supposed to rain, but it doesn’t, so what. you end up not relying on weather signs anymore. And from here comes the light try to lengthen the spells try to resist until the rain, try to do three times. We used Niklas (Nielsen) for example, because one of his skills is managing the tires in the right way, and that’s because we did that strategy that was right at the time. Unfortunately it was not 3 o’clock but 6 o’clock…”

The discussion proposed by the Ferrari AF Corse team, which now has to come together and understand how to get out of this unexpected situation, ends with a joke through gritted teeth and a painful smile.