Pastor Maldonado doubts Ferrari can turn around its disappointing start to the season and win races in 2014.<\/p>\n
Fernando Alonso appeared to be putting the F14-T’s early troubles behind him in China last time out when he finished the race on the podium.<\/p>\n
But the Spaniard is not promising more of the same this weekend in his native Spain, where he marked his most recent grand prix win one year ago.<\/p>\n
“We need to see,” said Alonso.\u00a0 “We enjoyed the result of China but there is still a long way to go and we cannot promise anything for Barcelona.”<\/p>\n
Like all the major teams, Ferrari has used the three weeks between China and Spain to prepare a significant package of upgrades.<\/p>\n
Team president Luca di Montezemolo, who recently installed Marco Mattiacci as Ferrari’s new F1 boss after Stefano Domenicali’s exit, is pushing hard for improvements.<\/p>\n
“We must find ways to be faster,” he is quoted by Switzerland’s Blick newspaper, “otherwise the 2014 season will be over soon.”<\/p>\n
Citing Ferrari sources, Italy’s specialist Autosprint magazine reports that the 2014 car’s small sidepods have been singled out by the team as a fundamental aerodynamic problem.<\/p>\n
“We are learning how to get performance out of this new set of regulations and hopefully to make this car more competitive,” said technical director James Allison this week.<\/p>\n
Maldonado, Lotus’ Venezuelan race driver, was asked by Spain’s El Confidencial if he thinks Ferrari and Alonso can recover and win races in 2014.<\/p>\n
“It will not be easy,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Ferrari is a great team and for sure they are going to give 200 per cent to allow Fernando to fight to win again.\u00a0 But it is always difficult to win,” Maldonado insisted.<\/p>\n
“If you doubt that, look at Red Bull and Lotus this year,” he added, referring not only to his own beleaguered employer but also the reigning world champions.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pastor Maldonado doubts Ferrari can turn around its disappointing start to the season and win races in 2014. Fernando Alonso appeared to be putting the F14-T’s early troubles behind him in China last time out when he finished the race on the podium. But the Spaniard is not promising more of the same this weekend …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,149,93,5340,1335,1842],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21821"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21822,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21821\/revisions\/21822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}