Report – Ferrari leaves Melbourne with two retirements

The Ferrari race turned out to be more complicated than expected, and in the end, the Scuderia team leaves Melbourne without a single point, and worse still, as the only team to have suffered a double retirement due to technical problems. Reliability seems to be once again Ferrari’s Achilles’ heel.

However, the grid placement limited the damage, with the 6th and 7th positions, but the first stint on soft tires caused problems, and while both drivers could have contended for points, it was Massa who first retired on the 45th lap, followed by his teammate ten laps later.

Felipe Massa – Retirement:

« We knew that the Brawn GP would be unbeatable today, but in any case, we thought we could have a good race. Our start was very good, but after 5 or 6 laps, we had difficulties with the soft tires, to the point where we had to stop very early. We then switched to a very aggressive strategy, which in hindsight turned out to be a bad choice, because shortly after our stop, the safety car came out. »

« I found myself in third place, but when the race resumed, I had less than ten laps to try to widen the gap on those behind me, with more fuel. At my second pit stop, we finally refueled to go until the finish line, but I was very slow until my problem caused my retirement. »

In my opinion, apart from the Brawn GPs, we are competitive, but we need to do things perfectly to be at the forefront. Here, it is very difficult to get the tires to work well, partly because the track doesn’t have enough grip. The solution for Malaysia? Work even harder.

Kimi Räikkönen – Retirement:

« When I ended up in the wall, it was my fault. It’s really unfortunate because given what happened afterward, I could have finished second. We lost valuable points but we will try to do well and properly start our season in Malaysia. We will have a better understanding of the situation there because Melbourne is not a representative track for performance. »

« The KERS worked very well at the start, but I didn’t have much room to go. If we didn’t think it was an advantage, we wouldn’t have used it. In the end, the main issue was tire management, but we also need to improve our overall performance.

Stefano Domenicali – Director:

« It was clearly not a start worthy of Ferrari, from every point of view. We lacked reliability, with two cars forced to retire. Our performance was not at the optimum level that we had seen during our winter tests: we struggled to manage our tires. Moreover, our strategic choices did not work out, particularly for Felipe. To summarize, it is a race to forget in terms of results, but we must remember it and try to analyze everything we mismanaged, so we can improve immediately. »

From this point of view, it is good to have a race right after, next week in Malaysia. It will give us the opportunity to react if we draw the right conclusions, calmly but with determination. Australia doesn’t seem to suit us in recent years: the circuit is a bit atypical and the hierarchy might not be as clear. It will be more evident in Sepang, but we are well aware that, apart from one truly untouchable team today, there are many other very strong competitors.