Stefano Domenicali was on the first plane back to Italy last night, but at least he was able to slam the desk drawer shut on the service revolver and put away the whisky.
The affable Ferrari team principal must have wondered whether the metaphorical clean shot to the temple was the best way out as he watched his cars slip, slide and slither their way around Melbourne’s Albert Park circuit this weekend. He has bet the farm – and, most likely, his job - on a radical design to push Ferrari back to the front of Formula One, but discovered it could be the wrong one.
Fortunately, Domenicali employed Fernando Alonso, the keen amateur magician who pulled a rabbit from a miraculous hat in the Australian Grand Prix to salvage some respectability for Formula One’s most famous team. Alonso’s fifth place was probably more a reflection of the Spaniard’s awesome talent than the new Ferrari’s potential to become a major factor in this Formula One season.
For every winner at the Australian Grand Prix yesterday, there was a substantial loser, a driver or a team for whom life was just an unequal struggle against fate, the Gods or a clueless rival.
In the Ferrari garage, the struggle falls to Felipe Massa, who spent an entire weekend appearing utterly confused. It is difficult to remember this likeable little Brazilian as the driver pipped to the 2008 world championship by a single corner at the final race by Lewis Hamilton. His form has fallen off a cliff and he bumbled and barged around Albert Park, taking the chequered flag a lowly twelfth – and there were only 16 finishers. Massa could partly blame a collision with the Williams of Bruno Senna for his finish, but that would not tell the story of a driver who is the subject of bets that he will be lucky to keep his job until mid-season if this keeps up.
Advertisement
Domenicali put a brave face on events, but he has a boss – Luca di Montezemolo, the charismatic Ferrari president - who is famously impatient. Sackings will be not far away if Ferrari are scrapping in the midfield come summer.
“We know we must raise the performance level of our car from what we have seen here in Australia,” Domenicali said. “We know the main areas we need to work on and we must accelerate as much as possible the development work to reach the level of the best.”
If Ferrari’s was a team failure, then Pastor Maldonado suffered an individual brain fade that earned him a cuddle from Adam Parr, his chairman at Williams, but cost his team dearly. Williams suffered the worst year in their history last season and yet here was Maldonado making his swashbuckling way through the field to sixth place to challenge the mighty Alonso, the two-times world champion, in the first race of this new year.
And then, on the last lap he put a wheel on the grass and spun into the wall. Race over and no points with Senna, his team-mate, failing to finish.
Senna was one of nine drivers who failed to complete the 58 laps of the Australian Grand Prix, an attrition rate typical of the first race of the season, although two drivers were lost as a result of a pile-up at the first corner of the race. Nico Hulkenberg looked a safe bet for points for Force India until he went out at turn one, but the biggest casualty of the day was Romain Grosjean, the young Frenchman.
Advertisement
Grosjean had taken his Lotus to an astonishing third place on the grid in qualifying, proving the speed of his new car. Grosjean was recruited by the team in 2009 as a substitute for the sacked Nelson Piquet Jnr only to be dumped. The faith of Eric Boullier, the team principal, in bringing him back into the fold was repaid when Grosjean overtook Red Bull and Mercedes to snatch a remarkable third in qualifying. Unfortunately, his luck ran out within seconds of the start of the race. He had an appallingly slow start and fell back into the midfield where he was clobbered by a charging Maldonado. The Venezuelan, as he showed on the last lap, is a unique blend of raw speed and utter clumsiness; if he came to your house, you would pack all the expensive china away for safekeeping to keep breakages to a minimum.