Ferrari: From Melbourne to Maranello, we travel non-stop

The double away match between Australia and Malaysia imposes a very tight pace on all the teams. Many of those who worked until the small hours last night to pack all the material in the boxes had only a few hours to rest and are now already on their way to Sepang, the town located between Kuala Lumpur and its international airport, home to the next Grand Prix. There are also those, like Stefano Domenicali and Pat Fry, who have even made their way to Maranello, where they will arrive late in the evening: after all, there is no time to waste, we need to push hard on the accelerator for the development of the F2012.

Also on the road are the cars used yesterday in the inaugural race of this very long season. At Sepang there will be no significant innovations from a technical point of view: we will have to make a virtue of necessity, that is, trying to best adapt the F2012 to the characteristics of the Malaysian track, which is very different from that of Albert Park. In particular, it will be important to find the right compromise between aerodynamic load and top speed, given that the first and third sectors are characterized by two long straights. And precisely the lack of top speed (yesterday Alonso reached 304 km/h in the speed trap, almost ten less than Hamilton) was indicated by Domenicali and the drivers as one of the areas on which a lot of work must be done to bring the F2012 up to par with the best cars on the lot.

The one who has already arrived in Malaysia is Fernando Alonso. The Spanish driver, who delivered yet another excellent performance yesterday afternoon, chose to move immediately to the humid heat of Kuala Lumpur to quickly acclimatise to what will probably be the most extreme conditions that a driver will have to face during the entire championship. Felipe Massa, however, remained in Melbourne: the Brazilian driver will fly to Malaysia tomorrow evening.