MAGNY-COURS, France — Ferrari’s sudden return to form in the French Grand Prix will have come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the sudden changes of fortune that happen so often in Formula One racing.
Nevertheless, questions were being asked at Magny-Cours about the significance of an incident at Maranello back in April, which crippled the Ferrari wind tunnel and severely handicapped aerodynamic developments on the cars.
There have been rumors for weeks about a failure in Scuderia’s wind tunnel, which is such an important part of its technical resources that it is usually kept running 24 hours a day. After initially denying the stories, the team finally admitted last week that the moving floor of the tunnel — which comprises thousands of metallic links — had come apart and caused considerable damage.
Team boss Jean Todt claimed that the team had been without the use of its tunnel for no more than two weeks (NSSN’s sources suggest it was twice that), and he said that the technical staff had decided not to continue research elsewhere. NSSN understands that this decision was made because of difficulties in correlating data gathered in differently configured tunnels.
The loss of the wind tunnel coincided with a slump in Ferrari performance at the three races before Sunday’s. No significant changes were seen in the aerodynamic configuration of the car at those races, and it was not until last week’s test at Silverstone that the cars’ performance of the cars made any useful inroad into McLaren’s recent period of technical superiority.
While the causes of the wind-tunnel failure have not been revealed by Ferrari, Todt robustly denied suggestions that his staff had ignored warnings from the manufacturer that the equipment was being used past its designed endurance.