Mercedes Praises Ferrari's F1 Strategy for 2010

Of all the teams that began copying Red Bull's blown diffuser design this season, only Ferrari seems to have gotten something out of it, as their recent performances in Germany and Hungary spoke for themselves. The Scuderia has practically been the only true contender for Red Bull for these past couple of races, which makes some of its rivals praise their development scheme for 2010.

The first to marvel at Ferrari's pace is the very motorsport boss of Mercedes-Benz, Norbert Haug, who congratulated the Maranello technicians for implementing a stage-by-stage blown diffuser, rather than rush an underdeveloped one into the car from the get go.

“Perhaps it was not a bad decision of Ferrari's not to rush," Haug is quoted by Germany's Auto Motor und Sport.

Ferrari's development plan for the 2010 season was initially affected by their rush to implement the F-duct on the F10. Given the fact that this move was not exactly successful, the Scuderia decided to update their car gradually, bringing new parts for each race on the schedule.

Needless to say, the results were much more positive than those experienced by other teams – Mercedes GP, McLaren or even Renault – who have rushed to copy the Red Bull brown diffuser in one push. And what's even more encouraging for the Ferrari-ans is that their car is yet to be fitted with the full effect diffuser, which is believed to appear on the F10 at the next race, in Belgium.

Ferrari's first stage of development for the blown diffuser started in Valencia, with updates for it being brought at Silverstone and Hockenheim afterwards. Due to the short period of time between the German and Hungarian GP (one week), the same configuration was used for both races.