Mark Hughes: F1's Inside Line

After launching the new F2008, Ferrari immediately got on with the task of shaking it down. This part of the process wasn't open to the press, but a brief film was made of the event and is currently posted on Youtube.

The nuances from inside the Fiorano garage are fascinating and give a real idea of how this team, with circumstances that are so very different from its British rivals that populate most of the pitlane, feels from the inside.

It begins with a besuited-and-booted Kimi Raikkonen stepping out of the old farmhouse that used to house Enzo Ferrari's office. His breath is heavy on the air and he's wearing a woolly balaclava. The weather is standard Modena winter - cold, damp and foggy.

As he makes his way to the pitlane, a few hundred metres away, you can already hear the car's engine being warmed inside the garage, the constant low revs an aural background that helps build the magic of the occasion. You get a little insight into what the best job in the world must feel like.

Kimi opens the small glass door and steps inside the garage. Because this is the team's very own venue, the garage is way better than you'd find in even the most opulent real F1 track. A glass-and-metal structure, like a huge conservatory, at the bottom of the pitlane, it looks warm, civilised, a cocoon from the outside world. This is where the team can play to its heart's content.

The Fiorano track is just an extension of the family home, somewhere the car can be run without going into the outside world. It's easy to imagine how the camaraderie and team spirit are enhanced by this. Those who have been intimately involved in the creation of the car can see it being operated here, watch it being driven in anger.

You can sense how big the contrast will feel, how they will feel like warriors against the world, on-guard and performing, when they go to a real track, with real rivals trying to trip them, trying to make life difficult, like a soccer team playing away. Here, uniquely, Ferrari has the luxury of playing at home.

Ferrari men are often portrayed as the bad guys, particularly by the Brits. It's a feeling based on the fact that they are far more skilled in the off-track elements of battle than any of the other teams. But that's the strategic style of the senior management, parlaying the marque's pulling power into competitive advantage. That has nothing to do with the guys in the core of the team, the engineers and mechanics. For them, any animosity directed at the team only brings them closer together.

Upon arrival, Kimi checks in first with David Lloyd, junior Formula Ford driver of the late '80s, now Ferrari's track operations chief, the role formerly filled by Nigel Stepney. In the background, tester Luca Badoer is an interested spectator. Kimi sorts out his visor pull-offs, then talks and laughs with his race engineer - and formerly that of Michael Schumacher - Chris Dyer.

There's definitely a spark between the two of them: they clearly enjoy the other's company and are totally relaxed together. That's not always the case between driver and race engineer. One imagines any tensions between them have been smoothed away by Raikkonen's title triumph of last year, the first time they'd worked together.

Recently promoted sporting director Stefano Domenicali arrives in heavy overcoat and makes straight for Raikkonen and Dyer with warm greetings. He's a good guy, genuine and straight with no apparent side, just like new technical director Aldo Costa. Felipe Massa arrives, scarfed up against the cold.

The car is still up on stands at the centre of the garage. The engine restarts, fingers in ears for everyone as the motor is kept up to temperature. As the noise cuts again, the camera pans to Domenicali making Kimi laugh. Now airguns clatter against their pre-setting as the wheels are attached and torqued up. Raikkonen explains something to an engineer about the layout of a steering wheel perched atop a bench.

Bodies turn and freeze to attention as in from the cold walks the boss, Luca di Montezemelo making quick but warm greetings as he moves among them - greet and smile, keep moving, making a bee-line for Raikkonen. Domenicali stands to one side to allow Luca access. Is it symbolic, this greeting? How he moves straight for the champion? Is it a conscious reinforcing of Kimi's position within the team? A simple acknowledgement of his champion's stature?

You can be sure the apolitical Raikkonen has played no conscious part in making it happen - he's just done his stuff and stood back, totally confident in his huge ability in the cockpit. Would Massa have been greeted the same way had it been him who'd brought the team's bacon home? Would Raikkonen's car ever have been allowed to leave the Hungary pitlane on Saturday without having been refuelled?

After a few words with Raikkonen, di Montezemelo moves a few paces and stops, waiting to be greeted by Massa, who jumps eagerly forwards, not laid back against a rail like Kimi, who'd waited for di Montezemelo to come to him. Greetings over, Luca then moves into earnest discussions with Costa, the tech director doubtless bringing the boss up to speed with where they are at.

Raikkonen is helmeted and HANSed up now, moving towards the car, and the hubbub of conversation suddenly stops as if in recognition of the symbolism of him stepping into the new car for the first time in anger. He slides in and is belted up.

As he pulls on his gloves, still there is near-silence in the background. Then Kimi's index finger gives the signal for the pneumatic hose to start the engine. It clatters into action at the second asking, that characteristic rasp that fills your head.

Di Montezemelo is stationed outside now, waiting to see the car leave the warmth of the garage for the foggy track. A flare of revs, and out of the lights it comes, turns and heads out for the track, getting smaller very quickly until there's only a red fog light in the distance.

Raikkonen looks smooth and assured on his out-lap, up and down the rev range, the bark of multiple downchanges echoing from afar and then the engine getting louder again as it accelerates back towards us. At this moment Piero Ferrari arrives in the pits and is greeted by di Montezemelo and Domenicali.

The installation lap completed, the car is back in the garage, the engine cut leaving a vacuum of stillness in the air for a second or so, before that's filled with the clanking and drilling sounds of dozens of pre-drilled operations carried out by the crew, a rapid series of fully orchestrated, second-nature tasks, so many of them the eye cannot keep abreast of them all. Kimi alights. Massa, onlooking, is talking to Piero Ferrari. Last year it was him in the new car first, Kimi who looked on.

Raikkonen is making curious up-and-down movements to Dyer, who tries to translate them to notes. Damping too stiff on rebound maybe? Then Kimi talks of the steering. He seems to be saying it feels lower geared than the old set-up, in a way that suggests he preferred the old one. Tester Marc Gene listens in intently.

Jean Todt arrives, greets Ferrari, Costa, Dyer. Kimi sits back in his chair on a perch above Todt's level, and again waits to be greeted, doesn't come forward. But they seem warm enough with each other. It may be subliminal, but for the first time this doesn't seem like Todt's team. It's like he's a visiting guest, warmly received, but from the past already.

Raikkonen does a more purposeful second run - more revs out of the pits, more wheelspin on the cold, damp surface. You can hear him holding the car against the brakes to warm them. He's full on it soon enough, the car joggling over the bumps in a way that now makes sense of Kimi's earlier gesticulations to Dyer.

The engine stalls for a nanosecond as he locks a rear wheel under braking - no software control for that now. Michael Schumacher arrives, looking super-fit. Massa bounds over to him, talking even before he gets there, clearly delighted to see him. Out on the tracks the revs flare, no traction control.

This is how a new era feels from the inside. (see http://youtube.com/watch?v=a84kyLLSDd8).