Snakes and ladders

Lotus were on the receiving end of an old adage in Barcelona. But have Ferrari turned a corner?

That's life,
That's what all the people say,
You're riding high in April,
Shot down in May. Never have truer words been spoken, or rather crooned. Frank Sinatra's reversal took place in the space of a month; the entirety of pre-season F1 testing is crammed into three weeks and there are likely to be quite a few evocations of the maxim in that time. Take Lotus for instance. Bounding out of their paddock hospitality suite at the Circuit de Catalunya last Monday afternoon, Romain Grosjean flashed a big smile in our direction. Why wouldn't he? It was a warm, sunny, early spring day in Barcelona. What's more, Lotus's new car had been impressive straight out of the box at Jerez. Life must have felt good for the Frenchman. It wasn't to last. The following morning, Grosjean managed just seven laps during which he sensed that something felt wrong - the E20 chassis developing a fault after being subjected to greater stresses in the sort of high-speed corners that the tight Jerez track simply does not possess. The smiles quickly waned, the car was taken back to base and about a third of Lotus's pre-season running time was struck off. Merde. Yet as Lotus furrow their brows in seeking a solution, there is finally evidence that Ferrari, hitherto on the back foot, might be making some progress. Both Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa stated before the test that racking up as many laps as possible was their aim for the week and whilst the Scuderia were not shy in taking to the track, their presence did seem muted compared to rivals. Ferrari are intent on (I'm sorry) doing it their way as they try and figure out the moods of the F2012, a process whose tribulations seem to have taken on the plot of one of those Tony Parsons-style 'Lad Lit' novels in which a formerly absent, workaholic father tries to 'connect' with his sullen teenage son. Late on Friday it seemed that an understanding of sorts had been achieved as Massa reached the magic 100-lap mark whilst setting some very respectable long run times. In doing so, Ferrari had joined the other big teams who started undertaking race simulations earlier in the week. Red Bull were the first to do so, with Sebastian Vettel completing a full Spanish Grand Prix' worth of 66 laps on Wednesday afternoon. The run wasn't strictly accurate (by my reckoning he stopped five times in all and some of the later stints were very short) but it still seemed more impressive than the run of Lewis Hamilton, who was on track at the same time. Interestingly, the World Champion had earlier also set the third quickest time of the day on soft tyres, outpacing Alonso's best on supersofts. Of course, any attempt to gauge performance is confused by the usual caveats such as fuel levels, tyres (new or used) and the like. Teams say they're not looking and listening to their rivals but if we try and listen to the teams, then it is possible to gain a little insight. For example, McLaren might not have set any earth-shattering times during either their short or long runs last week but Hamilton was more than happy to admit that the MP4-27 feels better than its predecessor through fast corners - an area where they were at a disadvantage to Red Bull last year. Yet he also reckoned that, right now, the World Champions are a bit ahead. Vettel, in turn, said complimentary things about McLaren but that's testing for you: a microcosm of the sport in which teams play their hands even closer to their chests than usual and we end the week with a Sauber quickest. One thing we can be sure of is that it's been a bad week for Lotus. But things have a habit of changing and if we might tip our fedoras in the direction of Old Blue Eyes one last time: I know I'm gonna change that tune,
When I'm back on top in June.