It's puzzling that Luca Badoer couldn't manage a decent qualifying lap. You would think that, being a test driver, he would have a good understanding of the limits of the car.
It's even more puzzling that Fisichella is doing poorly after putting the Force India on the pole the previous race.
I honestly was surprised as well, but after I thought about it for a bit, it started to make sense.
For Badoer, I figured he would have a great feel for the car, however, how much testing did he really get in the car before the season started? Also, with the rule changes from '08 to '09, I'm sure the car felt very different. Also, with the allowance of the 'super diffusers' that also changed the cars dynamics drastically in-season, which I believe he would have had no experience with. I'm not sure what their goal is during testing, but I would assume good, solid, consistent, and clean laps are what are in order, not balls-to-the-wall. It may be more difficult than it seems to switch out of testing mode and into race mode. I also think he lacked the balls to really push it and didn't want to wreck the car at each race.
For Fis, some of the same arguments apply. The force india and ferrari chassis' I'm sure feel miles apart to a driver. There is probably a lot to get used to and let us not forget, without in-season testing, he can't tune the car any faster than the race calender. He had quite a few races with the FI chassis and now only a handful with Scuderia. It takes time to build your set up.
Does this excuse either one? No, I don't think so. I'm not really convinced either is/was any good, for F1 that is. But I do somewhat have an understanding of where they are coming from. I never expected them to hop in and take pole, but maybe some points would be nice. However, with Brawn barely making points, maybe they aren't doing all that bad.
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