Pat Fry is under no illusions that a significant amount of work is required to restore Ferrari to front-running pace. Following a highly unexpected victory due to exceptional circumstances in Malaysia, the Scuderia’s current pace was underlined by only 15th and 18th positions in the final Shanghai practice session on Saturday morning.
“I don’t really want to go into where all the problems are,” Fry, formerly a McLaren employee and now Technical Director at Ferrari, said on China. “It’s not just a case of us trying to build a quicker car; we need to fundamentally be changing the methodologies that we use to select, design and manufacture so that we are competitive long-term.”
He stresses that changes are being made throughout the entire company.
“There’s work on all fronts,” Fry continues. “Not just work going into (updates) we’re taking to Barcelona, there’s also a huge amount of work in just trying to change the fundamentals of what we do so we can actually take a step forward and be competing with everyone else.
“The biggest performance differentiator is aerodynamics. We’ve got some issues there that we’re trying to resolve. The areas you need to be working on is everything from the way you run the wind tunnel, the accuracy of your wind tunnel, the simulation that you use to decide what components to take forward…so we’re not leaving any stone unturned.
“We’re actually trying to review and revise our methodologies through the whole process and that carries on into the design office for trying to get weight out of various parts, make other bits more durable. So there’s work going on absolutely everywhere within the company on the basic fundamental methodology as well as just trying to upgrade the car.”
Chinese Grand Prix qualifying begins at 2pm local time (GMT +7) and can also be tracked through the interactive GPUpdate.net Live Report.
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