After the Ferrari's 2009 season went from bad to worse in Shanghai, boss man Stefano Domenicali admitted that the team may well pull a Honda for the year and put their efforts behind developing their 2010 contender.
The Chinese Grand Prix was the third consecutive race in which the reigning constructors champions failed to register a single point, and it now means that the team have made their worst start to a Grand Prix season since 1981. Despite the potential for the team to make a return to the top of the order as and when they can upgrade the car's diffuser and reimplement the KERS device, their hopes in both championships seem to be all but over. Despite the team still looking focused on this current season and improving the pace of the F60, Domenicali hinted that the team may well choose to give up on this season if their form does not improve once F1 reaches Europe. Ferrari's double-decker diffuser is due to be rolled out at round five of the season in the Spanish Grand Prix.
When he was asked when the team might reach the point of turning their attention to the 2010 challenger, he stated that: "I think for sure we will see after Spain where we are. In that period we will see really what can be the situation - so when we come back to Europe basically."
Domenicali was also dubious about whether Ferrari's performance will be completely sorted by the new diffuser. "The situation is much more complicated than that," he insisted mournfully, "That device will give you a benefit. But it would be wrong to believe that it is the only key. We have seen, for example, the Red Bull car has done a really great job.
"They had more time, they switched their project much earlier than us and that is the reality and we need to consider it. The other thing that we have to understand well is that today in certain conditions, look at the first part of the race, our car was not too bad at all. So we need to understand a lot of things."
Ferrari's weekend was hindered from the start when the team chose to remove their troublesome KERS device from their pair of cars, resulting in a chronic loss of pace for Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen. In the rain-affected race, Raikkonen ended 12th and Massa retired with mechanical gremlins.
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