F1: Ferrari's F2012 one for true believers

Seven times in the past decade the winners in Melbourne have ended up taking the season's world titles.

As practice begins at Melbourne's Albert Park circuit today for the opening round of this year's F1 championship, with qualifying tomorrow and the race at 5pm, eastern Australian time, on Sunday, fans of Ferrari -- the sport's most worshipped team -- have been given hope, after disappointing pre-season form, that the red cars are in the hunt.

Fernando Alonso, twice world champion with Renault and -- now in his third season with Ferrari -- widely regarded as the best of today's supremely talented bunch of F1 drivers, has moved to soothe the nerves of the tifosi, the Italian team's huge army of fans.

Ferrari's F2012 model to be raced by Alonso and Brazilian Felipe Massa is a radical departure from its predecessors.

While it struggled during 12 days of testing at Jerez and Barcelona in Spain, particularly with its exhaust solution to the ban on blown diffusers, Alonso declared on the eve of the Australian GP that the car had "tremendous potential".

Ferrari has taken an aggressive new design direction after winning only one GP last year while Red Bull Racing ran away with the constructors' world championship with 12 wins -- and Sebastian Vettel claimed 11 of those as he became the world champion driver for the second straight year.

Alonso said in Melbourne this week: "I believe in this team [Ferrari]. I trust this team completely. It is the best team.

"We will put all the best pieces [of the F2012] together in Melbourne for the first time, as we never did this over the tests."

Ferrari's new technical director, Englishman Pat Fry, said towards the end of the Spanish testing that it was hard to contemplate a podium for the team in Melbourne, but Alonso has been far more optimistic this week.

Even if it that does not translate into victory on Sunday, he has faith that success will come over the longer haul against the combined might of Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes (with Lotus, previously Renault and still with the French manufacturer supplying engines, perhaps also in the mix).

"It [Australia] is as if we're on the first stage of a long race like in the Tour de France. This is the prologue, the time-trial stage.Even if we start slowly, we will have plenty of time to catch up during the season.

"It's not like the car from last season, which was almost an evolution of the cars from 2010 and 2009. I'm certain that, sooner or later, Ferrari will get back to winning ways... The history of the team teaches us that.

"I've also got tremendous faith in the team and the team has tremendous faith in its drivers. I'm confident. I'm very relaxed about the possibilities of our car.

"The [northern] winter has been tough for us with so many tests [of new components] to do... It's quite a complex car in terms of set-up and understanding it. In the winter tests you are always doing different programs.

"We want to be world champions in November, that's the ultimate target, and in Melbourne we need to have a good start. Let's see where we are after qualifying. And, even then, that won't mean much as this track is unusual.

"This circuit is quite special ... it is a stop-and-go track, with heavy braking -- so no long corners that prove the aerodynamics of the car. It's either flat out or full on the brake.

"So, not until after the races in Malaysia and China, will we be able to see exactly where will are in the pack... But I'm looking forward to the weekend with a lot of enthusiasm because it's the first time we'll really be able to put together all the work carried out in testing."

Of Fry's pessimism about a podium, Alonso said: "Engineers always look at the data, look at numbers.

"Maybe we did not reach the targets or the numbers we were expecting from this car [in testing], but that does not mean the actual numbers we see are not enough to fight for the podium... We will find that out only this weekend.

"There is definitely more to come from this car, and hopefully it will come soon... The team is very, very motivated, very ambitious for this championship, and there is a great spirit, as we want to be world champions.

"This is our target, and come November we must score one more point than the second guy if we want to be champions. We are prepared, united and we trust one another.

"Even if we have a slow start it doesn't matter. That is the good thing about Ferrari.

"There is no secret that F1 in the last couple of years is about consistency. It is about improving the car every race. It is something we have to do better than the others if we want to win the championship."

Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner is certainly not discounting F1's most successful squad.

"They [Ferrari] have got a great team. They haven't fully shown their hand yet," Horner said. "I think they're more competitive than people believe they are. I'm sure the car looks a handful, but sometimes a difficult car can be a quick car, so it would be foolish to write off Fernando."

And Niki Lauda, the man who resurrected Ferrari in the mid-1970s along with Luca di Montezemolo, now the parent sports car company's president, has downplayed talk of crisis with the F2012.

"Everything is either great or everything is negative [when there is talk of Ferrari, especially by Ferrari's own people]," Lauda said. "I don't think the Ferrari is as bad as it's being made out."

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