As headlines ring around the world hailing Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel on his world championship, there have been some very vicious headlines as well regarding Ferrari and their strategy that lost the title for Fernando Alonso. While I have distanced myself from Ferrari and latched on to Mercedes (Schumacher), I still think these attacks are ridiculous after you compare 2009 and 2010. For that very reason alone, Ferrari should be praised and their season should be viewed as successful.
look back at 2009 for just a second. Felipe Massa nearly killed, Kimi Raikkonen taking the teams only win at Spa, Luca look how bad you are and Jarno piloting the car after Massa’s crash. All in all it was an embarrassing season. Zero pole positions, one win, and six podiums out the entire year is clearly not Ferrari numbers that we are accustomed to seeing. Fast forward to this season and the Scuderia posted two pole positions which were tough to come by given the pace by the RBR, five race wins, and 15 podiums (including wins) and you can tell the Italian marque elevated their game.
The most impressive point was the fact that Ferrari really did not make waves during the middle part of the season. Red Bull dominated most of the year whether it be Vettel or Webber and Ferrari was relatively silent. That being said, Ferrari was able to really turn it up the pressure when it mattered and put the Red Bull boys to task. Granted they were not able to get it done in the end but Ferrari has always operated on a weird strategy plan. I can remember a number of times that Ross Brawn just simply missed the call and it cost the team a chance at a race victory. This mistake is obviously a big deal because of the championship implications but we should not be as surprised that a funky strategy call is what did them in. The measure of their season should also not be in just one call. Look at the whole scope of the season. They improved over last year and put themselves in the position to win the drivers title. A far cry from the 2009 season and that is why despite losing a chance at a title, we should look at the entire picture and rubbish calls from Italian politicians who were clearly speaking in the heat of the moment.
Excellent points, Shaun. Its quite easy to just look at the last two races and say that the 2010 season was a failure for Ferrari since they lost the WDC in the final round, but of course when you look at the season as a whole, its was FAR better than 2009. It was a good step forward for the Scuderia. …dammit.
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If it were still Kimi and Massa, they would have been nowhere near the red bulls