Friday: Ferrari loses hope but still fights!

Despite a decent first practice session this morning, Ferrari doesn’t expect to shine this weekend in Bahrain for the fourth round of the season. The Italian team is currently at an impasse and logs respectable times in Free Practice 2 under normal circumstances, but poor considering how competitive F1 has become.

Massa has the KERS, finds it somewhat beneficial, and finishes 16th in FP2 with a car that he doesn’t like. Räikkönen, for his part, settles for 18th position and patiently bears with the situation with the calmness he is known for. The Finn also has the KERS, making his car difficult to balance. Has the Prancing Horse lost its faith?

Felipe Massa – 8th and 16th:

« One thing is for sure, it was not a good day! We tried to work towards the race and improve the behavior of the car to be better in qualifying. The hard tires are very difficult to use here while the soft tires seem much better, whether on short runs or even longer ones. »

« The KERS helped us: without it, I would undoubtedly have been slower. I also made a mistake in my last corner with soft tires, which cost me at least three-tenths. We must therefore be patient and do our best with the conditions. »

Kimi Räikkönen – 10th and 18th:

« Even if we do not know the fuel loads carried by the other teams, it is clear that we are not as fast as we would like to be. We must still do the best we can under these conditions. »

Overall, we knew that the hierarchy wouldn’t be very different from other Grand Prix. So we focused directly on comparing the car’s configurations and finding the best set-up. We have a lot of data that we now need to analyze to be ready for tomorrow and the race. We can expect a complicated weekend, but we never had any doubts about that.

Stefano Domenicali – Director:

« Our car is not different from the one we had in China last week, therefore, we should not expect any changes… »

« Our objective is to score points at home, in Italy, but we have to be realistic and for now we can’t hope for better than that… We must be patient and work on all fronts to try to come back and be competitive as soon as possible. »