In the round-up: The parts which caused Ferrari to suffer retirements in the last two rounds were sourced from external suppliers.
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Arrivabene defiant as inquest over latest failure begins (The Telegraph)
"Sources at Ferrari say their spark plugs come from an external supplier near Maranello and that this latest failure was a freak occurrence. The same sources claimed the air-intake failures which afflicted both cars in Sepang the previous weekend were caused by failures in the manifolds supplied by an external supplier."
Heads set to roll after another Ferrari failure (The Times - registration required)
"Asked how he explained the past three races, (Arrivabene) turned it back on us: 'Everybody saw what’s happened, so give me the answer. Do you see any mistake done by the team?'"
Ferrari vow to fight Hamilton to the bitter end of 2017 season (The Guardian)
"We will fight until the last race. The last lap. The last turn."
The season is not lost for Ferrari, says Marchionne (Reuters)
"It’s a problem we’ve probably ignored over time because it was never of much importance but now we’ve had at least three occasions where we’ve really seen the devastating impact on performance. We’ll fix it."
Force India could relax team orders for Perez and Ocon (F1i)
"After fourth is secure, we will sit down with everybody and see if they can actually race again."
Red Bull wants 2020 deals for Ricciardo, Verstappen (Motorsport)
"He's technically out of contract at the end of 2018 because he will have completed a five-year contract."
Early Renault F1 announcement ‘a big surprise’ for Sainz (Crash)
"I actually knew about half an hour before the announcement so it was quite unexpected from my side."
Hamilton is on the brink of greatness as fourth world title zooms into view (Evening Standard)
"After all the speculation over Hamilton’s future, he would seem certain to renew his £30 million-a-year deal with Mercedes and aim for at least one more title with more records waiting to be shattered. Hamilton has already won eight grands prix this season and at this rate, he may yet overtake Schumacher’s haul of 91 wins, a total once thought beyond reach."
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Comment of the day
A fine addition to yesterday’s Stats and Facts from Jose:
In fact you are missing one very special stat. Mercedes have become the first team in F1 history that reach 10 wins or more in four consecutive years, something that McLaren, Williams, Ferrari and Red Bull eras couldn’t do.
Jose María Cimadevilla
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RP (@slotopen)
10th October 2017, 2:19
I don’t see how parts coming from external suppliers makes a bit of difference. Merc, Red Bull, and everybody is using outsourced parts. Quality control includes the supply chain.
Maybe it is just spin. It might put pressure on external suppliers. But I’d admit there was clearly a QC problem and keep the rest between the team and suppliers.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
10th October 2017, 2:47
You are getting caught up on journalism, these heinous headlines, it’s a journo attack. Ferrari being Italian and not English exposes them to deliberately polemic and critical opinions. Ferrari’s attitude is commendable, they haven’t resorted to blame games, Arrivabene defends his men. Say Merc had a brake failure, or RB has a rotten PU, or a bad tyre, the first thing they do is publicly blame their suppliers, Hamilton if very frank with these types of comments, he’ll justify anything he sees fit on circunstances. RB shames their suppliers, they’ve shamed Renault and Pirelli, coercing the latter.
MaxCO2
10th October 2017, 7:23
Oh, poor Ferrari.
After the FIA favoritism of Ferrari over the years, it’s about time they leveled the playing field for all competitors.
BasCB (@bascb)
10th October 2017, 7:44
I agree that it is very good to see Ferrari is not instantly panicking and starting to fire everyone just because a huge driver mistake and 3 instances of component failures @peartree, with even the big boss saying that while they should improve quality control (off course, but importantly he doesn’t throw anyone under the bus) the title fight is not over yet and they can still win it as a team.
The last years have shown us how a car failure late in the campaign could easily throw the formbook around and either seal or disrupt a solid title bid from drivers.
Let us all hope for a solid comeback from Vettel and Ferrari next races. I think Vettels win in Austin showed he can really do well at the track.
Kgn11
10th October 2017, 8:28
And what does Hamilton’s 4 wins there shows he can do?
Tiomkin
10th October 2017, 10:19
Heads will roll. It is what Ferrari does if they lose. The man at the top will get the boot.
C
11th October 2017, 7:44
Everyone except for the topmost man will get a boot. SM will stay sadly putting unwanted pressure and head rolling each time they start limping.
Kimiwillbeback
14th October 2017, 11:20
Marcionne is a piece of work, a real piece of work. Hard as a rock without an ounce of humanity, it’s all about the results.
But he’s also extremely good at his job and selecting the right people. He was the one that reorganized Ferrari and identified what they had been lacking. He was the one that promoted the right people and let go of the ones that didn’t work.
I have no doubt he will make Ferrari the leading team in F1 again. He’ll do absolutely anything to achieve that before he retires and there will be no mercy for those he thinks stand in his way.
Kgn11
10th October 2017, 8:32
Ferrari’s attitude is commendable……
Really? The same Ferrari who has embarked on a media blackout all season? The same Ferrari who suddenly replaced the head of their PU department less than half way through the season?
Let’s stop trying to paint them as this moral & righteous team
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
10th October 2017, 18:30
Media kind of blackout…, they have never stopped holding press conferences, they just stopped speaking to the press outside press events. Why? because anything they say gets twisted, it’s a situation whereby if you try to expose the situation, you just get into more trouble, if you say the press is unfair, you’ll get even worse consideration from the press.
@davidnotcoulthard I don’t know when that happened, I think a couple years ago, according to Abiteboul and Ted Kravitz, Ilmor was working on a new direction for the PU but Renault chose their own, then we heard Ilmor might work with Honda but I don’t think that was confirmed either.
@baron (That’s not a British flag) I said English press because the fervorous, over enthusiastic, protective and bias journalism I’m talking about comes as a result of Lewis being English. Nationalism is in question here. Nationalism is natural and the press should just admit it, sky should, rather than state ” us neutrals” and pledging not to be bias, just say it, we all want our driver to win, and then they should keep it real. I know that sometimes they might not realise they are being bias, if they were then they wouldn’t be nationalistic. For instances, I didn’t want Palmer to go, but Palmer wasn’t good enough, that’s how you state one’s desire yet you stay realistic. For instances I don’t like Seb and I’d rather have the British driver winning, but I’m not going to justify my choice by vilifying the guy I don’t like. Where did Ferrari state NGK cost us the race? I only know this because someone either leaked it or made it up on British media.
You are right that sometimes we’re harsh and critical of our sporting heroes, but we still think we’re favourites to win the world cup though. Critically though we do criticise internally, f1 is worldwide.
David Not Coulthard (@davidnotcoulthard)
10th October 2017, 8:38
@peartree at least Red bull’s drama with Viry seems to sort of workt hough (they inlisted Ilmor’s help IIRC?)
Baron (@baron)
10th October 2017, 12:41
@peartree On the contrary I have seen a source that claims Ferrari has named NGK as the supplier of the failed spark plug, which everyone who has ever changed plugs regularly knows that in 99% of the cases failure is caused by an incorrect pressure on the ceramic part which then causes a hairline crack leading to an intermittent or a dead short. It can be caused (and often is) by a mechanic in a hurry. Such a naming (if true) would be grossly unfair to NGK. I also don’t understand your thinly veiled attack on “English” (but I think you mean British) journalism and it’s treatment of “foreign” entities. There is an element of nationalism in every country’s sporting journalistic offerings but rather like the Italian press, the British press in general are often unreasonably scathing to their own home grown sporting heroes. Build them up and knock them down seems a fair analysis. If you are troubled by the ‘nationalistic fervour’ (sarcasm btw) generated from sites such as F1F then you ought to try a Dutch site for example. There you will be able to bask in the glory of completely unbiased F1 reporting.
John H (@john-h)
10th October 2017, 19:54
Just for the sake of my own common sense @peartree, can you inform me explicitly where this ‘journo attack’ is please. Many thanks.
MacLeod (@macleod)
10th October 2017, 8:18
Renault had the same problem when Max Verstappen drove the Belgian GP when number 4 sparkplug failed too. It’s rare but everything under stress can fail how good the quality may be.
Phylyp (@phylyp)
10th October 2017, 3:18
Between the atrocious pair of tweets after the Singapore GP and this latest missive, Ferrari need to work on their messaging. Either something is being lost in translation (literally, as well as figuratively), or Ferrari are just being arrogant in a way that is not justified given their performance for several years.
While the comments about external suppliers are non-attributed statements and not direct quotes, this appears to be a direct quote from Arrivabene: “You see any mistake done by the team?”.
Why yes, Mr. Arrivabene – the team is a collective of the drivers, the mechanics, strategists, team principals, and arguably the supply chain.
Your drivers have made errors that a) took both of them out of contention in Singapore, b) earned one of them a penalty in Japan. The team (suppliers + Ferrari quality control) had their own failures, they a) failed to spot the issue that compromised both cars in Malaysia, and b) Vettel in Japan.
For a team that gave us fans something to look forward to & hope for this year, Ferrari has done a nice job of dropping the ball. And the communications from Ferrari are probably just making it worse.
In contrast, look at Mercedes – their first crippling failure was in the first season of these new V6 hybrids at Canada ’14 – after that issue, we got some straight talk from Mercedes about the issue. Fast-forward to Rosberg at Singapore ’14, and Hamilton at Malaysia last year – again, pretty straightforward and honest talk. No waffling on about the supplier who messed up on the big-end bearing, either directly or indirectly, despite the uproar and impact on Hamilton’s championship chances.
Sumedh
10th October 2017, 4:03
If you read the article, it can be seen that it is telegraph making all the insinuations about external suppliers. Arrivabene doesn’t say anything about external suppliers.
I think the only supplier Ferrari has been critical of is Pirelli, especially when their tyres have blown.
Phylyp (@phylyp)
10th October 2017, 4:18
Which is why I said
and went on to respond about that specific question.
NoName (@noname)
10th October 2017, 10:51
@phylyp ⚠️ CORRECTION. Mercedes first problem was in Australia 2014 when Hamilton had a mis fired cylinder caused Hamilton to DNF.
Phylyp (@phylyp)
10th October 2017, 13:04
Good point, I forgot the spark plug lead issue 👍 @noname
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
10th October 2017, 18:43
@phylyp Ferrari said nothing about external suppliers… it’s the telegraphs doing, so a question mark there.
Better than Abiteboul blaming Palmer’s side of the garage for the reliability issues, even if truthful that’s not a comment that you should publicly make. Cyril said the mechanics “youth” was too blame.
You forgot Mercedes was never fighting for the championship against another team, and you’ve forgotten Hamilton casting doubt on his mechanics when he had more failures than Rosberg, when the tables turned he got mute. In 2016 the mechanics switched sides, in my opinion Ham’s right to criticise here, Ham had some failures and he questioned Toto’s decision to switch the mechanics. Mercedes blamed Brembo and to be fair themselves for the disk explosions. Mercedes silently questioned the oil on the big end bearing fail, which is an intrinsic part of the engine, one that’s most definitely made by Brackley.
Teams are all the same, RB though it is another case, they do coerce and shame suppliers a bit more.
Damon (@damon)
10th October 2017, 8:22
Oh come on! They didn’t have 20 GPs in their years! They had 16 races back then.
This is not to say the last 4 years haven’t been the most dominant era of all time.
However, Ferrari could/would have achieved 10 wins in 5 straight seasons.
So let’s look at others’ great series.
Ferrari:
2000 – 10/17 wins, equals to ~12/20 wins
2001 – 9/17 wins, equals to ~11/20 wins
2002 – 15/17 wins, equals to ~18/20 wins
2003 – 8/16 wins, equals to 10/20 wins
2004 – 8/18 wins, equals to ~17/20 wins
McLaren:
1988 – 15/16 wins, equals to ~19/20 wins
1989 – 10/16 wins, equals to ~13/20 wins
1990 – 6/16 wins, equals to ~8/20 wins
1991 – 8/16 wins, equals to 10/20 wins
Williams:
1991 – 7/16 wins, equals to ~9/20 wins
1992 – 10/16 wins, equals to ~13/20 wins
1993 – 10/16 wins, equals to ~13/20 wins
1994 – 7/16 wins, equals to ~9/20 wins
Mercedes – obviously, the highest percentage 4 straight seasons of the modern era:
2014 – 16/19
2015 – 16/19
2016 – 19/21
2017 – 10/16 …
Damon (@damon)
10th October 2017, 8:37
One typo correction:
“Ferrari: 2004 – 15/18 wins, equals to ~17/20 wins”
David Not Coulthard (@davidnotcoulthard)
10th October 2017, 8:41
@damon Still though, numbers are numbers – the different number of races/year does make total points scored, etc a pretty pointless stat, but it’s still interesting nonetheless.
I mean, it’s not like COTD is saying that Mercedes are more competitive the last few years than they were in 1954-1955.
Philip (@philipgb)
10th October 2017, 9:07
@damon
A stat is a stat.
Ferrari are still the only other team to have a 4x consecutive 50%+ win rate. Depending on how this season finishes Mercedes is still on for a consecutive 75%+ win rate which is unparalleled.
Andy
10th October 2017, 12:08
Much easier to read if you gave percentages instead of fractions.
Ninjenius (@ninjenius)
10th October 2017, 8:50
The supplier’s a Daimler imposter I tells ya! (Because we don’t have enough conspiracies being thrown around at the moment,)
joe jopling (@jop452)
10th October 2017, 9:26
Marchionne thinks every solution is to sack someone and rearrange the team…again…and while they do not blame external suppliers…they do not blame the team either…..
Their problem is the latest spec engine, which they are pushing to max power, because of no testing rules, they are (like Honda ) developing it in race conditions, and sometimes parts will fail.
Would be better for them if they actually spoke to the media, instead of blanking them out
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
10th October 2017, 19:03
@jop452 You are reading what some “partisan” wrote, and that journo wrote what he wants to be true rather than the reality, cue telegraph article.
Ferrari for some reason, gets a bit more exposure on team personnel changes, with other teams, we hear someone left for retirement with Ferrari we hear sack. This myth that Ferrari fires everyone and fires more people than other teams can disputed via empirical data. You look at the garage, the same people working there for 20 years, the mechanics are recognisable and visibly older than most of the other teams.
When Ferrari blames the team they are wrong to do so because bad luck is bad luck and people need time to do their job and so it’s Ferrari’s problem, If Ferrari doesn’t blame the team, Ferrari are wrong because they don’t admit their mistakes…. It’s endless.
On the failures, the flying lap’s Craig Scarborough, speculates that the carbon intake manifold issue might have occurred as a result of the new water coolant (check Ferrari’s roll hoop ears) and it’s repercussions in weight, pressure or both being put on top of the intake in question. The spark plug issue, all we know is that Ferrari has some very unique spark plugs made, all teams use suppliers for spark plugs, that said the design of ferrari’s spark plugs is and has been for a couple years “innovative” supposedly very small. Who’s at fault? we don’t know, we don’t know because as of all the press conferences Ferrari, like all other teams hold plus the obligatory press conferences they haven’t said anything concrete on the subject, obviously there hasn’t been no press conferences between the car’s strip down, the next race is a good opportunity for this to happen, then we will know. Ferrari hasn’t blacked the media out at all, they just don’t speak outside press events, particularly they don’t like to speak to sky uk, and I suggest also sky It after last year they made a mess of a translation to sky UK that caused the made up Vettel/Arrivabene feud.
joe jopling (@jop452)
10th October 2017, 20:01
(@peartree) Yes I read about the suspected water coolant problem, and it makes logical sense, but if they had more testing it may have shown up earlier, so as I say they are doing their testing in full view of the media..
The current car is probably their best for some time, and although you could expect some issues, the last 2 breakdowns must have been spotted earlier…theres enough sensors from the car and data being logged….
You mention Ferrari do not speak to Sky…I can understand that, but when recently 3 media people tried to ask a question live on camera…they didn’t get a polite refusal….just blanked…It was only recently that I realised Ferrari had a media spokesman….he has been very quiet….
Todfod (@todfod)
11th October 2017, 4:20
Personally, I think their engine reliability has taken a dip after the oil burning restrictions came in. My theory is that to compensate for that loss, they’ve been running the engines more to the limit and have encountered unexpected problems because of it.
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
10th October 2017, 13:22
I guess Hamilton can only be stoped by 2-3 DNFs.. Not likeley.
Ferrari can hold their chin up. First time in years they have a car that is often fastest on the grid and remain the only competitive challanger.
Another step like this year and maybe they can contend for the titles.
Philip (@philipgb)
10th October 2017, 15:48
I’m not really hopeful for Ferrari next year to be honest.
This year Mercedes have a car they’re not happy with and feel like they’ve struggled to interpret the new rules for. Yet they’re likely going to win both championships. Both, in what they consider a bad year.
Now I don’t expect Mercedes to hit the ground running next year in the same fashion they could in 2015 and 2016 where their immense advantage allowed them to begin the following year’s cars development early. This year in their current fight they probably aren’t at as advanced a stage with the 2018 car as they were in previous years. But I can’t help but feel that Mercedes at least know where to focus their energy to come on stronger than Ferrari do.
Red Bull getting a competitive power unit is all that I think can threaten Mercedes.
Rai 1
10th October 2017, 23:38
I have to agree, it will be the red bulls fighting Mercedes for championship next year.