24/04/2013
NEWS STORY
Ferrari has rooted out the cause of the DRS failure that effectively ended Fernando Alonso's hopes of success in Bahrain on Sunday.
After two days of investigating, engineers at Maranello concluded that the problem was caused by the breakage of a mechanical component within the system. It is the first problem of its kind in the three years during which DRS has been used.
"It's hard to recall a race where so many things went wrong," admitted Stefano Domenicali. "The DRS failure prevented Fernando, who yet again produced a great performance, from fighting Vettel for the win. Then for Felipe, there were the two tyre related problems that pushed him out of the points and prevented him from getting the top five finish that was within his grasp. We had the potential to get these results, but we were unable to do so, partly because of external influences."
While the DRS failure is not something that causes long term concern, Domenicali knows that reliability is vital if the team is to stand any hope of taking the titles.
"We must work with renewed attention on this front," he said. "We must also continue to develop the car and increase our understanding of the tyres, which is more crucial than ever this year.
"In these first four races of the season, we have not managed, for various reasons, to bring home the points that were within our grasp. That's why the gap to the top in both classifications seems quite large, but we must not be discouraged by this, quite the contrary, because we have seen so often, both in our favour and against, how things can change in a hurry. We believe in our ability to be in the fight for the titles right to the end and this time, we have been in that fight since the start, which has not been the case for a while. At the same time, we must be aware that in order to achieve our objectives, we have to be perfect in every area."
Having completed just 87.9% of the laps that made up the opening four races of the season, Ferrari lags behind Lotus (100%), McLaren (99.3%), Caterham (97.6%), Marussia (97.6%), Red Bull (91%) and Williams (89.6%).
Furthermore, its two drivers have scored points on 6 occasions thus far, compared to Red Bull (7) and Lotus (8).