The issues were visible from as early as qualifying, as both Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa were unable to get their tires up to temperature throughout the Saturday action in order to tackle for the top spots. The best they could get was a 5th place on the grid by the Spaniard, which later translated into 4th place thanks to a good pitstop strategy.
Needless to say, the expectations for last weekend were much higher than that, and the team's boss Stefano Domenicali vowed his squad will examine closely the causes of Ferrari's poor form in Australia and try to fix what needs to be fixed in time for the Malaysian Grand Prix.
“What we need to understand is why in this weekend we did not get out the performance that we were expecting from ourselves,” said Domenicali in a race review. “This is the main thing we need to look at back home and make sure that in Malaysia this thing will come back.”
“For sure this weekend was not the one that we wanted in terms of performance, but in the race I have to say with regards to Fernando, who was in ninth position after the first lap, that it was a really difficult situation. He did a fantastic race and he was able, also due to the strategy, to be faster and faster and fight for the podium. For sure if he would have had a clean start then the race would have been totally different.”
Recently, Team Lotus' Jarno Trulli also complained about the Pirelli tires provided to the teams for the Australian race, saying that the rubber available this past weekend was very different as compared to the one available in pre-season testing. The compound was designed to be more resistant – Sergio Perez' one-pitstop strategy is proof enough – hence getting it into the right operating window was harder.
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