Ferrari turns of cars aren’t too bad, either.
But as we sink further into the doldrums that are the summer break — I’ll grant you that a wild lawsuit around COTA helps keep things lively — there won’t be many turns of cars. We must look elsewhere.
And Ferrari does the trick, as the team post-Hungary puts on an alternately sad and happy face.
Well, for Ferrari. Because this kind of PR language just makes me smile:
There’s a lot cooking on the technical front, as Alonso said yesterday to the media after the race, but the key is to cook it to perfection before serving it up: you don’t want to rush it to the table until its ready nor overdo it. Either of these routes could leave a bad taste in the mouth. There are five weeks before the event in the Ardennes, two of which are taken up by the compulsory break agreed among all the teams. The next days will see plenty of heat generated at Maranello, most of it generated by the energy going into the work of each and every one within the Scuderia, rather than from the weather. Then, it will be time to recharge the batteries prior to the final three month rush which will be very intense and won’t leave a moment for taking a breather.
It’s the “cooking it to perfection” that had me laughing like we’d just served Grace a low-alcohol beer. It’s the little added something that Ferrari puts into its PR pieces that make them stand out from the rest of the F1 world.
OK, I get you maybe aren’t buying it. But what if I told you that Ferrari was touting Fernando Alonso’s season thus far as pretty close to perfect? Would you give Ferrari props for that? Well, then do:
Its hot in Maranello, as it is in all of Italy, which is hardly surprising as this summer has seen several heatwaves with epic names such as Ulisse, Minosse, Caronte and Scipione. Fernando Alonso’s summer is also looking hot as he starts the holiday on a +40: that’s not a case of a bad fever, but the result of a more or less perfect first part to the season. The Spaniard is the only driver to have finished every race in the top ten, bringing his run of consecutive points finishes to 23, which is one step away from the outright record held by Michael Schumacher.
I’ll grant you, that record held by Schumacher sounds impressive, and Michael’s is, right? Alonso’s benefited from more scoring spots, and, no, I’m not going to look it up and see if he’s finished in ninth or 10th and thus really the record is a bit of a stretch. (But I think Tony might want to.)
What I think this bit of PR from Ferrari comes down to is what we talked about before the Hungarian GP. Alonso’s locked and loaded now; Ferrari points out this is a Ferrari’s driver’s biggest lead at this point in a season since Schumacher in 2004.
Ferrari, which by its own estimate had the fourth fastest car last weekend, has a driver arguably way above where he deserves to be. (But you have to grant Alonso what, maybe a solid 25 of those 40 points just to his being the best driver on the grid?) And that means that a run of a few years of missteps and mistakes feels a bit like it could maybe be sort of kind of turning around… I write with qualification.
Ferrari now has a full month to think about Alonso’s position. And so do the folks at Red Bull, McLaren and Lotus.
So perhaps things aren’t as boring as they seem.
