Non-stop from Melbourne to Maranello

Melbourne, 19 March – The back to back trip covering the Australian and Malaysian Grands Prix imposes a hectic pace on all the teams. It was a case of all hands on deck last night right into the early hours, to pack away all the equipment in the garages. So not much time to rest before tackling the journey to Sepang, the area situated just outside Kuala Lumpur and its international airport and home to the next Grand Prix. Some, including Stefano Domenicali and Pat Fry have for their part headed back to Maranello, where they will arrive late tonight. Indeed there is no time to lose as there’s a pressing need to push flat-out on the development of the F2012. Also making the trip are the cars used yesterday for the opening round of what will be a very long season.

There will not be anything new on the technical front in Sepang and the team will have to make a virtue of necessity, which means trying to adapt the F2012 as well as possible to the characteristics of the Malaysian track, which is very different to Albert Park. It will be especially important to find the right compromise between aerodynamic downforce and top speed, given the first and third sectors both features long straights. In fact, the lack of top speed (yesterday, Alonso hit the 304 km/h mark, which was around ten less than Hamilton) was singled out by Domenicali and the drivers as one of the areas that needs a lot of work, in order to bring the F2012 to the level of the best cars in the pack. Already arrived in Malaysia is Fernando Alonso.




The Spaniard, who delivered yet another magisterial performance yesterday afternoon, decided to move to hot and humid Kuala Lumpur as soon as possible in order to adapt quickly to conditions that are probably the most extreme a driver has to contend with all season long. Felipe Massa is still in Melbourne and the Brazilian will fly to Malaysia tomorrow night.