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Spain, Barcelona - the venue where everyone expected the Italian giants to bounce back. And they did, although it was a lower-than-expected bounce! The famous Ferrari Fumble as I call it was back too!

The entire paddock was keenly following the pace of the 'ungraded' Ferrari F60 - with a new diffuser and with few aero components. While the Friday sessions were not much to talk about, the Ferrari duo of Kimi & Felipe blazed the Spanish circuit in the Saturday practice. They dominated proceedings before ending the session 1-2 - leaving the rest atleast half a second behind! Was this a sign of things to come?

Well it could've just been - but the famous Fumble was back, which left Kimi in his pitbox while the Q1 session ended - another miscalculation that cost Kimi a top 5 qualifying slot, which Felipe later grabbed.

With one of their cars in the top 5 and the other in the bottom 5 - the team were aware that they were starting off the backfoot. However, Kimi's attempts to gain places in the race came to a grinding halt after his F60 suffered from a hydraulics failure. Funnily, the Finn experienced problems during his installation lap itself, which forced the Ferrari team to disable his KERS system.

So while Kimi retired from yet another attempt, the forces at Ferrari shifted attention to the 2008 World Championship runner-up Felipe. He was running a strong 3^rd and successfully managed to hold back a much-faster Sebastian Vettel after 'KERS-ing' past him at the start.

Tactically, Ferrari knew that the Red Bull would be able to jump them in the round of pit-stops, so they changed their strategy to match the Red Bulls'. Both drivers pitted on the same lap for both their pit stops, which was Ferrari's way to ensure that Massa would come out ahead. And he did - at both times.

However, in attempt to get Massa out and ahead of Vettel, Ferrari made a silly error. They short fueled his Ferrari by a lap and the result of which we all saw on TV.

Let us do some analysis and math the 'Ferrari' way!

Massa started the race with 655kgs of fuel in his car, compared to Vettel's 651.5kgs - which technically meant that he was fueled to go one lap extra in the first round of pitstops. But like I said, one lap was all it would take Vettel to jump the Ferrari in the pit stops, hence, Ferrari chose to bring him in on the same lap as Vettel.

In the first round of pit-stops, Massa did come out ahead of Vettel and they stayed in the same position till the second round of pitstops. Here again, Massa finished his pit-stop much faster to gain track advantage. This is also where Ferrari erred and how!

8 laps to the end, Massa was informed over the radio that he needed to converse fuel as he was fueled one lap lesser than needed. Poor ol' Massa tried to save fuel while also attempting to defend position from a charging Vettel. However, 4 laps to the end, Massa dropped his pace to atleast 8 secs a lap - which meant that he not only lost position to Vettel but also a late charging Alonso.

As expected, Massa crawled to the finish line and his car came to a halt only 5 corners after the finishing line. A serious gaffe - to run out of fuel - that too in F1 - worse, when you're driving for a team like Ferrari.

So what was Ferrari's error - if you read between the numbers - one will know that the error was only .25 of a second in their pit-stop!

It is assumed that a typical F1 car consumes around 4 litres of fuel for a lap. Considering that Massa was fueled one lap short, all he needed was a little longer second pitstop. It is also widely known that an F1 re-fuelling rig can refuel at 12 liters per second.

So by my calculations, all that Felipe's Ferrari needed to do in the second round of pitstop was to be 'stationary' only for a quarter of a second longer! That would have given him the much needed 4 litres to finish in 4^th and register Ferrari's best ever finish in the 5 GP old 2009 season!

Well like they say - a second is much too long in the world of F1.  Ferrari just proved the worth of a miniscule quarter of that second!

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