Ferrari: Scaling the problem

It's no mystery that Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro is having difficulty being competitive at the moment. However, Felipe Massa downplayed the problem when, at the end of the three hours of free practice ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix on Sunday, he pointed out that these negative circumstances are not comparable to what happened to the victims of the earthquake in Italy, which hit the Abruzzo region the night after the Malaysian Grand Prix.

On both Felipe and Kimi's F60s there is a sticker with the message "Abruzzo in the heart", a sign of support for the victims of the disaster and also to promote the charity initiative organized to help the region. Ferrari's partner teams such as Scuderia Toro Rosso also displayed a message, while Jarno Trulli had the logo applied to his suit.

On the track, the Scuderia and its drivers have not hidden the fact that they are going through a difficult period: the lack of a diffuser similar to those of the three teams that use it, which the Paris Court of Appeal approved on Tuesday, is just one of the factors that determined this situation, while the decision not to fit the KERS, which the team used in the two opening races, led to a drop in performance, if compared to those of the leading riders . So, although the testing times were not particularly significant, the fact that Felipe and Kimi ended the day in twelfth and fourteenth place respectively is at least indicative of a less than optimal level of performance.

At the top of the time sheet are the names that have become almost predictable this year. The winner of the two season-opening Grands Prix, Jenson Button, was fastest, with his teammate Rubens Barrichello coming in third. Nico Rosberg's Williams-Toyota was placed between the two Brawn GP cars. Immediately following are the Red Bull Renault pair Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, the fastest of the "old style" diffuser cars, while Jarno Trulli closed the top six in the Toyota.

An element that worried all the teams before today's session is the reliability of the two types of Bridgestone tyres, the super-soft and the intermediate, the same ones used in Melbourne. At the Australian event, both compounds had appeared difficult to manage, but here on the much grippier Shanghai track, everything seemed to go smoothly on the tire front. In tomorrow afternoon's qualifying session we will certainly have a clearer vision of this element of the package and how competitive the Scuderia can be on Sunday.