Ask Gary Anderson

What's going on at Ferrari? During the last few seasons Ferrari has blamed the windtunnel for its issues. With new regulations, including a brand-new engine - something Ferrari should have excelled at - it's still struggling. Does Stefano Domenicali need to get the boot? A Ron Dennis-type character may be what's needed.
Chris Patajac, via Facebook

Chris, look what your question has caused to kick off in Maranello, where, after you asked your question, Domenicali has left!

I don't think his job was easy. When you're an Italian working under Luca di Montezemolo life must be very tough. Maybe he was just too nice a guy. Ferrari needs to look at why Jean Todt did such a good job. He wasn't Italian, so was not influenced by the political surroundings. Another one of those would do no harm, and then there's always Ross Brawn, as I'm sure he has caught enough fish by now...

I think you summed it up at the beginning of your question. Ferrari has blamed and blamed and blamed everything around it and never seems to take it on the chin, admit that it's difficult and get on with it.

It needs to move away from trying to play the political game. F1 is not easy for anyone, and you need a team principal with the brief to assess where you are, identify the weak areas and rectify the situation by firing or hiring as required. This is a constant requirement if you want to be successful.

It sacked a truly committed lifetime Ferrari man in Aldo Costa, who has now moved to Mercedes and is responsible for this year's championship-leading chassis. He was on the podium in Bahrain proudly collecting the constructors' trophy for Mercedes.

If the new regulations had not incorporated a new engine formula then I'm sure Ferrari would have done a very good job. Unfortunately, the new regulations demanded a power unit incorporating a 1600cc V6 engine with a single turbo, maximum fuel flow, maximum fuel consumption and ERS. All of this is a new direction for Ferrari.

Why is the Mercedes a cut above the rest? Is this simply the difference Ross Brawn made or is it much deeper within the design of the car?
Rob Halls, via Facebook

Mercedes had a good season in 2013, but in reality it's only this year it has come of age. That, I believe, is the result of what Ross Brawn was trying to put together.

Brawn took on a lot of high-dollar personnel to join a team that already had some very capable people. All of these new personnel had been technical directors of other teams. Bob Bell (who is now on his way out), Geoff Wills and Aldo Costa are all very competent engineers, but it takes a little time for them to find their feet and integrate with the original group of people.

The cream rises to the top, and after that happens a bit of weeding needs to be done. If this is done correctly, then you are left with a very strong structure of highly motivated people.

Mercedes is a works team that builds the chassis and the power unit. This means that the integration of all the systems that make the car function are constantly being optimised.

McLaren gets the power-unit package that Mercedes has defined and has to install it in the best way it knows how.

More importantly, McLaren seems to want to work in a very different way. It believes in a flat management structure, so there is no individual steering the ship. The big question is, is this right or wrong? If you look at the performance of McLaren when it had John Barnard or Adrian Newey at the helm, I think every ship needs a captain.

Gary, would you explain how the Mercedes sounds like its running a 'big-bang' engine, while Ferrari and others sound conventional?
Craig Harper, via Twitter

I have to say I haven't really noticed this. The Mercedes does sound quite different from a qualifying lap to a race lap, but I've always felt that this was because of how it mapped the engine-torque output for new tyres against used tyres.

I'm not an engine specialist by any means, but to eliminate any engine manufacturer from finding a secret weapon the regulations require that two conrods have to be mounted on one crankshaft journal. Perhaps even with this you could have a different firing order.

The one thing I would say is that Mercedes seems to have taken the power unit as one system and packaged it to get the best torque output from all the inputs, whereas Ferrari seems to have tried to optimise every individual unit and is now trying to get them all to work together.

An example of this is the exhaust system. On the Ferrari, the primary and tailpipes are tuned for engine performance, when in reality once you stick the turbo on the end of the tailpipe all that effort goes out the window.

I consider the Pastor Maldonado incident proof that the new noses can be dangerous. What do you think?
Roy Canfield, via Twitter

Roy, having looked at the incident from many different angles I am fairly confident that it was wheel-to-wheel contact that flipped Esteban Gutierrez. With an open-wheeled formula this is one of the things that will inevitably happen. I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate the FIA and all of the teams on the big push in safety that has taken place since Ayrton Senna's accident at Imola in 1994.

That said, I'm not a lover of the new low nose. It has all been done to minimise the risk of launching a car when there is nose-to-rotating-rear-tyre contact, similar to what happened to Mark Webber in Valencia in 2010. However, this is only one incident and for me the biggest risk is if a car stalls on the grid and a driver coming from further back is unsighted and hits the stalled car in the rear. This will have serious consequences, and also the low nose is more likely to submarine underneath the conveyor-belt crash barriers.

The rear-crash-structure area and the front and rear-axle centre height are all around 300mm upwards of the reference plane. This is where the nose crash structure should have been located, and as a side effect the cars wouldn't have looked so stupid.

What's your take on Jean Todt's opinion that the drivers' extreme dieting is a bit of a non-issue? And would you personally feel that the minimum weight should go up to address this?
David McDonagh, via Facebook

If Jean Todt feels comfortable with putting heavier drivers through hell to try to lose a couple of kilos then he has put his cards on the table.

As for me, I don't agree. Some of these races can be incredibly demanding, for example take Hungary on a scorching day - I've seen drivers getting out of the car and they're barely able to stand up.

In the late 1970s, in Rio one of my jobs with McLaren was to pour a bucket of cold water over our drivers when they came into the pits. James Hunt came in and I duly did my job, but our other driver, Patrick Tambay, didn't make it to the pits - he blacked out with heat exhaustion and went off.

This weight problem is very easy to fix and should have been sorted before the season started. The car weight with driver should stay at 690 kilos, and there should be a ballast area halfway up the seat back so that the centre of gravity of any added weight is in line with the driver's centre of gravity. This would negate any possible advantage from contracting lightweight and small drivers.

Weigh the drivers and then take the second-heaviest driver, and anyone lighter than that has to put ballast to the difference in this defined position. It could be done right now on safety grounds but, as I said above, Jean Todt has set out his stall and doesn't think there is any safety issue.

By definition the lighter drivers are smaller, so there is plenty of room for the ballast.

Do you think there will be a fix for the engine noise by the end of the year?
Jonathon Klein, via Twitter

Jonathon, it's going to be very difficult to do something that all three of the current engine manufacturers, and even Honda for next year, will agree on.

If something can be done, it will no doubt influence power output for someone, or it will be artificial and make F1 look silly.

Time will tell if the FIA really listens to the consumer. It has agreed that the noise could be better and will push for something to be done about it.

Where do you see Force India finishing at the end of the season?
@ThisF1Kid, via Twitter

Speaking as the founding technical director of the team back in 1991, I hope they can finish this year in the top four in the constructors'. Since they were Jordan they have been through a lot of different owners. But they still have a lot of very talented ex-Jordan people working there and have now found stability and owner vision, which is something very important to long-term planning.

It won't be easy, and Force India has benefited at the start of this season from others screwing up. But the car is good on tyres and I think Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg will push each other to new levels and in turn push the team.

Why are all the teams keeping the revs so low? They barely go over 12k. Will it make a big difference in performance/fuel use/sound?
Tim van Wesemael, via Facebook

It's because of the fuel-flow rate and not the maximum fuel-usage limit. With a maximum of 100 kg/h fuel flow, it's a waste of time to go any higher with the revs as you'd just be constantly reducing turbo boost to stay within the fuel-flow limit with basically no increase in power.

If the fuel-flow regulation didn't exist, the teams would use 15,000 rpm and varying turbo-boost pressures in qualifying, when fuel consumption isn't a problem. The noise would be a little better, especially on the second half of longer straights, but as the turbo acts like a silencer it wouldn't improve by that much.

The interesting thing would be that if the 100kg maximum fuel usage for the race was retained, fuel saving would be much more difficult and teams would use very different strategies to achieve this.