By any standards, an eighth constructors’ championship in 10 years represented another highly successful season for the men from Maranello in 2008.

Yet the team’s year may be best remembered for its celebrations of the drivers’ championship success that never was for Felipe Massa.

The delirious scenes in the Ferrari pit garage at Interlagos when the team thought its Brazilian star had won the title, and the depressed atmosphere that spread once it dawned that he hadn’t, will go down as one of year’s most enduring images.

In truth, Ferrari should have marked Stefano Domenicali’s first year as team principal with another double title triumph.

Arguably the F2008 represented its strongest all-round package since its dominant 2004 car.

Aldo Costa built on the strengths on the 2007 model, namely the car’s abilities in sweeping, high-speed corners, but realised attention had to be paid to improving performance on slower circuits such as Monaco were it was trounced last year.

So the team shortened the wheelbase of the F2008, improving the car’s nimbleness in slower corners and over kerbs.

The move worked a treat: Ferrari again swept to convincing victories at faster venues such as Bahrain, Spain, Turkey, Magny-Cours and Brazil, but also had the legs on McLaren while it was dry at Monte Carlo and at F1’s two new street venues.

One drawback was that the car wasn’t as quick as its rival’s at heating up its tyres, meaning wet weather exacerbated the problems and would leave its drivers hopelessly exposed.

Silverstone and Spa were classic examples. In Britain, Massa spun five times while Kimi Raikkonen, not helped by a bizarre team tyre call, also struggled to stay afloat and slumped from second place.

At Spa, race leader Raikkonen appeared to lose all confidence – and more importantly grip – when a late rain shower arrived, and slammed into a wall.

Still, the four fully wet races aside (only two of which were won by Hamilton), McLaren only really had a clear edge in the dry at Canada, Germany and China.

So Ferrari’s failure to retain the drivers’ title can be put down to the kind of mistakes that have provided the key contrast to the Schumacher/Brawn era over the past two years.

Melbourne set the tone in that respect: Both Ferraris stopped with engine failures, capping a miserable opening weekend after Raikkonen suffered a fuel pump problem in qualifying and Massa spun on the opening lap.

Engine problems recurred at a crucial phase of the title race in the summer.

After a stunning drive at the Hungaroring in which he had passed both McLarens by the first corner, Massa’s engine cruelly blew up three laps from victory.

The issue was traced to a con-rod problem and Ferrari was sure it was a one-off…yet it happened again on Raikkonen’s car next time out in Valencia.

While the reigning champion’s title defence had already largely come off the rails by that point, Massa had emerged as Lewis Hamilton’s main contender and rebounded brilliantly from his Hungary heartbreak with an inch-perfect win on the Valencia streets.

But under the lights in Singapore he was let down again when, after opening up a big lead in the race’s first phase, a trigger-happy mechanic operating the team’s pit stop ‘traffic light’ system – which had already proved problematic in Valencia – meant Massa blamelessly drove off with the fuel hose still attached.

It was this chaotic moment and the Budapest blow-up that told in the final reckoning as Massa lost the crown by a single point.

Without such setbacks, Brazil would surely have had its first world champion since Ayrton Senna.

That Massa scored race victories (six, the most of anyone as it turned out) and six pole positions was no real surprise: He had proven his blistering speed in his previous two years at the Scuderia.

What really stood out were the qualities his long-time detractors refused to believe he possessed.

First, his ability to perform strongly at anywhere other than his traditional strongholds of Sakhir, Istanbul and Interlagos, where the requirement for bravery on the brakes (rather than finesse) always plays to his natural strengths.

While there were plenty of examples of how he dispelled this myth, it was his superb pole position lap at Monaco, a track he freely admits he doesn’t enjoy, that proved he had stepped up a gear.

Then there was his supposedly ‘fragile’ mental make-up. After his customary poor start to the campaign, rumours were rife that his job was on the line (again). Cue a lights-to-flag victory in Bahrain.

Then after his humiliating performance in the wet at Silverstone was followed by a rather lame defence of position against Hamilton at Hockenheim, he responded with the drive of his life in Hungary.

And finally, of course, there was his ability to beat Raikkonen consistently – something he resoundingly did for most of the season.

Indeed for Kimi it was a hugely disappointing title defence.

His car problems in Australia aside, he made a strong start, winning at two of the opening four rounds (Sepang and Barcelona) to open a handy nine-point title lead.

But then the wheels came off and in truth his season never really recovered.

He can party blame this on a string of unfortunate circumstances in the summer which stopped him building any kind of momentum – an exhaust problem while dominating in France being the best example.

Yet Kimi is too talented, and highly-paid, a driver to have to hide behind such misfortunes.

In truth the F2008 developments suited Massa more as the season progressed and the Finn struggled to get the best out of the car, particularly during qualifying.

However, the way he would regularly come alive in the closing stages of a race once in clean air and set the fastest lap said as much about his focus as his poor grid slots.

At times during the year, Kimi appeared to fall back into his disinterested mode and he made some strange mistakes, notably in Monaco when he slalomed into the back of Adrian Sutil.

Ferrari plans to give him plenty of testing mileage over the winter in the hope that he will rediscover his best form for 2009, when it will want to call on the full potential of what should be the strongest line-up on the grid for the start of F1’s potentially wide-open new era.

2008, though, was Massa’s year.

While he may have missed the title in heartbreaking fashion it was his coming of age, along with another constructors’ crown, that made Ferrari’s season one to savour.

James Galloway

 

better reliability = constructors AND drivers championship

 

very true