Italy surprised by Ferrari’s Australian GP shocker

The double retirement in Australia was reportedly the Maranello team’s worst start to a season since South Africa in 1992, when both scarlet cars expired with engine failures.

“The Ferrari was slow and fragile,” Corriere dello Sport summarised of the Albert Park race, where Felipe Massa stopped with a mechanical problem and Kimi Raikkonen was asked to retire with a few laps to go, having survived a spin into the wall. Also referring to the F60 single seater, a standout of the winter test season, Tuttosport added: “It was much slower than expected.”

Tyre management and poor strategy choices no doubt contributed to Ferrari’s performance, and team boss Stefano Domenicali revealed to reporters that engineers will be looking closely at how the weight implications of the KERS system played a role. “In my opinion, apart from the Brawns, we are competitive. The solution for Malaysia is to work, work, work,” said Felipe Massa, who was seventh fastest in qualifying.

While Ferrari is hoping for better this weekend, F1′s other 2008 title protagonist McLaren knows it faces an even harsher challenge on the long curves of Sepang. “There probably will be a bigger difference between us and the Brawn car (in Malaysia),” world champion Lewis Hamilton admitted. “We’ll be a little further behind. “Hopefully by China and from then on we will be a little bit closer,” he added.

Ferrari will again use active KERS systems throughout the Malaysian grand prix weekend, despite suspecting the technology played a role in the team’s lack of pace in Australia.

Team boss Stefano Domenicali said problems managing the tyres at Albert Park was a leading factor in the F60′s struggle for speed. “Tyre use is also linked to KERS, so there are many things that we need to understand now very quickly,” the Italian is quoted as saying by La Gazzetta dello Sport.

Many teams, having spent a lot of time and money developing the newly allowable energy re-use technology in the winter, decided that the compromise in weight distribution is not offset by the 82 horse power bursts.

Domenicali said BMW-Sauber’s Robert Kubica – not running KERS – had a similar strategy in Melbourne last Sunday “but they did not destroy the rear tyres like we did”. “It is something that we must consider: the KERS and the weight distribution,” he added. “But in Malaysia we will use KERS again.”