Does Marco Mattiacci not know Ferrari history?
Discussion
Or maybe they really have changed. I just read the article on Autosport about the engine freeze http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/116008 in which the following statement is made:
Marco Mattiacci said:
We've never worked from tactical angles saying 'let's do this softening of the rules so we can catch Mercedes'
Maybe it is my interpretation but I can think of a lot of instances where Ferrari have worked from tactical angles to gain an advantage or reduce a disadvantage - they have been much better recently but to claim they have never done this is a little far fetched.IainT said:
If you look at the quote it's very specifically referring to 'catching Mercedes'. He's not saying that the team hasn't done it in the past, just in this case.
I know what you mean but not sure I agree, saying "We've never worked from tactical angles" does imply to me that they have never done it, then followed by an example of catching Mercedes currently. Just thinking about the approach they took over the Michelin tyres which had not changed for 2 years but were suddenly found to be the wrong size because Ferrari were not winning refutes the "never" part of the quote.Marco Mattiacci said:
We've never worked from tactical angles saying 'let's do this softening of the rules so we can catch Mercedes'
If I choose half a quote, or random words from a quote, it won't have to appropriate context. I've bolderated the bit that limits the scope of the other bit...Now, you could stretch that to refer to any time that both Ferrari and Mercedes have had teams in F1. You could stretch it to mean the current Merc team, post-Brawn. I think it's fairly clear that, for much of that period though Ferrari have been marginally quicker than Merc. The only sane conclusion is he's referring to the here and now - this season.
I've no clue if Mattiacci is or isn't an expert on the internal politics of Ferrari F1 - I somehow doubt he's been briefed on all the internal discussions from previous seasons. He might be, he might not. I hardly see it as all that important.
What he is saying here is that he feels he needs to play that 'political' angle to allow his team to catch up with the team on the grid that did the best job of interpreting the new rules. I can hardly fault him for trying that, can you?
IainT said:
What he is saying here is that he feels he needs to play that 'political' angle to allow his team to catch up with the team on the grid that did the best job of interpreting the new rules. I can hardly fault him for trying that, can you?
I can't fault him for trying, but Mercedes have done a better job here, at other times in the past other teams have done a better job than Ferrari and their usual tactic is to get the rules changed to reduce the advantage the other teams have rather than raising their own game to match. There is a pattern which doesn't fit with the word never which was used in the quote.
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