By Carlo Platella
“It was clearly a mistake.” Giuliano Salvi, Ferrari Team Manager, does not hide himself at the end of one of the most painful sporting days in the recent history of the Prancing Horse. At Imola the 499Ps were the fastest cars in the dry, expressing a very respectable pace even in the wet. However, the victory in the 6 hours faded in just 10 minutes, with two errors made when the rain arrived. Here is the reconstruction of what happened provided by the Italian engineer.
Ready from the start
The race kicks off under a hot sun in Imola, but the weather is set to change quickly. Already on Saturday a violent storm had hit Santerno at the end of qualifying, after a previously sunny day. The forecast for Sunday anticipates the arrival of more rain halfway through the race, affecting the teams' strategies. Ferrari for example he almost completely gives up on replacing the tires, carrying out triple stints to speed up pit stops and eliminate the delicate warm-up phases, so as to maintain precious positions on the track. A strategy that initially allowed the #50 to recover up to second position, after being relegated during the first round of stops.
“We expected the rain to come soon,” explains Salvi. “Because of this we asked the riders to manage the tires better, because we wanted to lengthen. We were expecting something that, according to our data, should have arrived sooner. For example, we focused on Nielsen, who we believe is one of the best at managing tires.” Precisely the late arrival of the rain compared to the initial forecasts insinuates a certain mistrust in the radar forecasts, influencing the decisions of the wall at the time of the transition to the wet ones: “The crossover estimate was correct. The error arose from meteorological information. Our radar told us that the weather would get worse much sooner than it did, so we began to no longer believe it.” Ferrari at that point finds himself having to make decisions with a distorted vision of what the meteorological picture was: “The information we had was obviously wrong and they told us that the rain would be temporary”reveals Salvi.
The judgment of the pilots
The decision not to return in time to fit wet tires was also influenced by the feedback from the drivers who were behind the wheel at the time. “According to the pilots only the last sector was criticalwhile the rest of the track was ok”, continues the Team Manager. In fact, several GT3s, including the winning BMW, did not use wet tyres, an episode which demonstrates how ambiguous the situation was at the time, even though they were cars equipped with ABS and with different types of tyres.
Furthermore, in the Hypercar platoon, the 499Ps are the cars that suffer the least as the track gets damp, so much so that Molina is the author of an overtaking on Kobayashi, who was in great difficulty with his Toyota. A kindness that, according to Salvi, paradoxically backfires against Ferrari itself: “Our car made the tires work better than our rivals. The car managed to run on crossover time a little too long. The pilots were happy and said there was a possibility to continue [con le slicks]. We were happy with the car. After Qatar we developed it in the right way. The pilots were happy, perhaps too happybecause they continued to be so even when the track started to get wet.”
The other mistake
The late switch to full wets is not the only mistake made by the Cavallino in the key ten minutes of the 6 hours of Imola: “We should have differentiated the strategies between the two machines, but we didn't. We need to analyze what happened and understand why.” Once the wet tires were fitted, the Ferraris were now distant from the leading group, with a gap that was impossible to close despite guessing the last key moment of the race: “In returning to dry tyres, the crossover point was right. At that point we did well, but the situation was already compromised. We will work to understand how all this happened to prevent it from happening again.”
Ferrari pays dearly for the mistakes made, but according to Salvi it is all part of the growth path of a team that debuted just over a year ago: “Maybe last year we went beyond expectations. We are still a young team and sometimes bad things happen. This was definitely a bad day. We are truly sorry for our fans and for all the people who came to the stands in Imola to support us. I saw people crying on the side of the track. We have to do a better job, but last year we showed we can do it.”
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