Ferrari to try out 2014 parts

Alonso's Ferrari

Ferrari will use the remaining free practice sessions this year to test bits and pieces for 2014, starting in Korea.

Although the Italian stable and Fernando Alonso are still in with a mathematical chance of catching Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari know there's not much they can do if their rivals continue their current form.

With most of their focus already on next season, they will take it a notch up in free practice at Yeongam this weekend and trial development parts for their 2014 car.

"We've still got some developments coming through for the next few races and we will be running and testing them to continue to try and improve the car," engineering director Pat Fry told the team's official website.

"For 2014, because of the much larger changes to the cars on the engine side and also the aero aspect, it's naturally much harder to test components now, but there will be some small development bits we can run during this year's remaining free practice, looking more on the reliability front than anything else, which means we have busy Fridays planned for the next six races."

Ferrari appeared to slump following Pirelli's decision to introduce new tires in July, but chief designer Nikolas Tombazis believes they cannot blame it on the rubber.

Tombazis believes the problems with their wind tunnel at Maranello played a major role in their slump, but he expects an upturn in performance now that it is back up and running.

"It would be somewhat superficial to blame the tires as the only reason for our decrease in performance. We also took some development steps that were not as strong and didn't work.

"Wind tunnel technology has been a weak point for us, compared to our competitors. We had some problems with our flow quality so it was not as uniform as it should be and we could not run as big a model as we would have liked. Our data and instrumentation was quite outdated so we couldn't do that many runs and experiments per day, which was a bit of a drawback. The past months we spent updating it have addressed all these problems. Therefore I am optimistic that, on this front, when we are fully up and running we will not be in deficit to our competitors," he said.

As for next year's car Tombazis admits it will be very different to its predecessors.

"The changes aerodynamically are quite significant and in some key areas this involves reviewing our design completely," he said. "The front wing is designed to a different set of rules, the rear wing too and the elimination of the exhaust effect is also very significant.

"Furthermore, when it comes to interacting with the engine, cooling is very important and to get it right is very critical. All these factors mean the 2014 car will be very different, but we cannot claim it is starting from zero or from a clean sheet of paper, as you have to use your knowledge and experience from the past to design the car.

"This means there are areas where we feel we have to catch up with our competitors and others where indeed we are all starting from zero." Planet F1