In a move so late it was positively posthumous Jules Bianchi, the Ferrari test driver, took the car for a spin at Spain's Idiada Circuit last Saturday. The work he did there concentrated on the car's aerodynamics, for this has long been diagnosed as the car's failing; and yet it was a classic case of closing the garage door after the Red Bull has bolted.
Fernando Alonso goes into the penultimate race of the season here on Sunday only 10 points behind Sebastian Vettel. While Alonso has said he is confident and trusts his team, his chances of winning his third world championship were best summed up by one beleaguered member of the tifosi who said on Friday, shrugging: "For Fernando to win Vettel needs to crash. Twice."
In reality it should never have been this close. Ferrari still have a slim chance because of Alonso's dogged ability to make the best of a bad job while his and the team's position have been promoted by McLaren's habit of not only shooting themselves in the foot but using a sawn-off shotgun to do it.
Ferrari went into the season with the car that was a dog and, though it broke free from the kennel at times – Alonso, remember, has won three times, though has not looked capable of doing so since Germany in July – it remains fundamentally inferior to the Red Bull.
Even the loyal Alonso, who finished third in both practice sessions on Friday, with Vettel top both times, has spoken out. "While there is little talk from other teams but many updates, we have a lot of talk but very [few] updates," he said recently. "Words are useless. We talk a lot of Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays about new pieces we bring to each track but there have been many Fridays on which the words were for nothing."
Gary Anderson, the BBC's technical expert who has a talent for making the complex easy to understand, says the team were too aggressive with their design from the start. He says: "They didn't do a very good job of reading the regulations this year. When the car hits the track in Melbourne [for the first race] that should be the product of six to eight months hard labour. And it was poor in their case.
"You shouldn't go to the track in March and have a shock. Pat Fry [Ferrari's technical director] should have known what the performance of the car would be. You have very sophisticated simulation tools now.
"Everything should have been known. But they appeared to have been surprised. Before the Ferrari came out at the beginning of the year everyone said that they were going to be really aggressive on the design. The FIA regulations have to be optimised. But that doesn't call for an aggressive design. An aggressive design means that you are doing things just for the sake of it."
There are many technical reasons for Ferrari's troubles. They have had wind tunnel problems. They have also had difficulties – perhaps most crucial of all – in qualifying. Alonso has not been better than fourth on the grid in the past eight races and is normally about sixth. He is stronger in race mode when he is not hindered by the car's poor DRS system, which is used more freely in qualifying.
But there are deeper problems at Ferrari. There are questions over Fry in his role as technical director, which he took on for the first time at Ferrari. The team were more competitive two years ago, when Alonso almost won the title, and when Aldo Costa, the man Fry replaced, was in charge. Ferrari have not been innovative enough. They have been too content to close the gap on their more inventive rivals at Red Bull and McLaren. They have not challenged, intellectually.
Fry, though, does not have the solitary responsibility of making a fast car. He was also brought in to build a team around him (even Adrian Newey, at Red Bull, has men around him). Fry has made appointments but they have yet to make their mark and Ferrari are one of the very few teams with no problems when it comes to making appointments. Technical directors, of course, cannot prove themselves in a short time and Fry will probably be given another year but the signs are not promising.
Go higher still. Is Luca di Montezemolo right to lead the team, as president? There are worried whispers in Italy that he is too distracted these days, concerned by his other business ventures in clothes and furniture and now by politics too.
But there are also other concerns, which go deep to the heart of Ferrari. This is an organisation which can sometimes be too introverted in its nature.
And with introversion comes a sort of arrogance, a false self-confidence. Somebody with the famous prancing horse on his breast said recently that Ferrari were better than Red Bull because the car had not retired on technical grounds this season (this has happened twice with Red Bull).
Even Newey, who spent a long time in Montezemolo's house near Bologna a few years ago, when Ferrari tried to woo him, might not have been able to change this.
The journalist Beppe Severgnini said: "Italy is the only workshop in the world that can turn out both Botticellis and Berlusconis." There have not been many Botticellis from Ferrari recently.
