One more F1 qualifying session (Bahrain) down, and the Ferrari's have got themselves in rather dismal 8th and 10th positions on the starting grid. At this rate they're looking at the worst season start they could ever have had with not a single point from the first three races.
Ferrari last failed to score points in the first three races in 1981 (and in the year before), the drivers then were Gilles Villeneuve and Didier Pironi were driving for the team, and the 3 litre 12 cylinder that they drove was in no way competitive.
Mix-ups have been plentiful this season, with Raikkonen being let out on extreme wet tyres on a bone dry track at Malaysia and a miscalculation on Ferrari's part (pure arrogance) that put Massa at 16th position on the starting grid. One need not even be reminded about last season's horrendous pitstop blunder where Massa was let go from the pits with his refuelling hose still attached.
The days of Jean Todt, Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher's title-winning Italian machine look like they're long gone. The legendary Austrian driver, Niki Lauda, even said that this heralded a return to Ferrari's " spaghetti culture", a reference to the way in which Ferrari used to depend more on passion that performance and reliability. And the current car, the F60, has displayed neither (of the latter two). Out of the 6 times its been driven (3 races and by 2 drivers in each race), the car has retired thrice and never finished at anything better than 9th place.
Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo is flying in for the F1 Bahrain race on Sunday. But things don't look too good, what with Ferrari's F1 boss Stefano Domenicali saying, "We knew we would suffer in China, and in all probability we will be suffering again here this weekend."
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