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Ferrari: Tears for tifosi again?

Ferrari's 2012 pre-season testing has proved, like cold pizza or overcooked pasta, hard for many Italian Formula 1 fans to digest.

Gazzetta dello Sport said: "Ferrari, Fry pessimistic? Let's hope it's just pre-tactics,"

This comes after Ferrari's technical director Pat Fry had dashed the hopes of the team after the final test in Barcelona.

STRUGGLING IN F1

Not many celebration were had in 2011; the sport's most successful team won once and finished third overall. Ferrari has not been dominant since Michael Schumacher's seventh and last title in 2004.

Kimi Raikkonen's 2007 crown for the team was against the odds and Raikkonenn, quickest on the first and last day of 2012's winter tests, may not feel too unhappy about being in a Lotus rather than a Ferrari for his comeback season.

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo could just about handle the team pulling the wraps off one of the ugliest cars yet to have come from the most stylish of stables but it will have to be quick to be loved.

There has been little evidence of that so far and Fry told reporters at the Circuit de Catalunya on the day of testing (March 4) that there was a lot of work still to be done before the March 18 season-opener in Australia.

Fry said: "In the hunt for the podium in Melbourne? At the moment I'd say no. It will only be in Melbourne that we will get a clear answer as to whether we have to be very disappointed or just a little."

Bernie Ecclestone, whose main desire at the start of every season is for the title battle to go down to the last corner of the last race, will be hoping Ferrari fixes its problems fast.

McLaren, Mercedes and Lotus may take the fight to champion team Red Bull but there is nothing to get the pulse of a red-blooded Italian racing fan pulsing faster than the sight of a Ferrari leading the way to the chequered flag.

PLAYING CATCH UP

Ferrari supporters will be only too painfully aware of the dangers in allowing any rival to get too much of a head start, as Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel did in 2011 and Jenson Button did with Brawn in 2009. Button, who won three races in 2011 and finished overall runner-up as McLaren clawed its way back from a pre-season nightmare, had little doubt that Ferrari and double champion Fernando Alonso would shift up a gear.

Button said: "We all like a challenge from Ferrari, it's a fantastic team and they've achieved so much. I'm sure Ferrari can find its way out of the sticky situation...if the team IS in a sticky situation. I don't really know where they are in terms of pace.

"I'm sure they will catch up because they have the resources, they have the expertise and they really, really need and want a good 2012," he said.

Ferrari is the only team to have competed in every championship since the first in 1950, racking up 16 Constructors' titles and 15 Drivers' as well as 216 race victories. It won every Constructors' championship from 1999 to 2004 and the most recent was in 2008.

To put it in perspective, one only has to think of the drought the team suffered from 1980 to 1999, when it failed to win any Divers' titles, and the period from 1980 to 1997 when it won 29 races.

Team boss Stefano Domenicali and Alonso were certainly not panicking as they prepared for Melbourne.
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