Saturday: Ferrari aims for the podium with Massa

Scuderia Ferrari showed its ambitions today by clearly raising its level of play in Barcelona, and only an evaluation error marred this day.

The drivers of the Rossa indeed dominated the last free practice session, giving good hopes for the upcoming qualification. While Felipe Massa proves that the F60 has improved by taking the 4th place on the grid, Räikkönen stumbled – in the same way Massa did in Malaysia – by estimating that his Q1 time would be sufficient. That was not the case, and the Finn will start tomorrow from the 16th position.

Felipe Massa – 1st and 4th:

« We have demonstrated that the car has improved and is much more competitive than in other races. I am happy to be back at the front in qualifying and credit must go to all the Scuderia staff, who have worked day and night in recent weeks to bring many new elements to the track so quickly. There is still a long way to go, but we are working in the right direction, which is a good sign for the future. »

« Starting from 4th place on the grid, my goal is to fight for a podium finish. At the start, the KERS might help me gain a few positions and now we know we have a good race pace. I feel more comfortable behind the wheel: the car is more stable and no longer slides everywhere like it used to. »

Kimi Räikkönen – 2nd and 16th:

« We made a stupid mistake. It’s really a shame because the car was much better than the one we had in previous races and we had every chance of getting a good result. I didn’t particularly do good laps in my only run in Q1, but we thought my best time would be enough to get through to Q2 so I stayed in the garage. »

« There’s no point in assigning blame because it wouldn’t change anything now. I certainly wouldn’t have been happy to do another run because I was thinking about saving a set of new soft tires for Q3, and the team also thought we could do that. Tomorrow’s race will be difficult, and we will try to make the best of the situation. The F60 has improved, maybe not yet at the level of the best, but we’ve really come close. »

Chris Dyer – Race Engineer:

« We have worked so hard to bring new elements here for the F60, and the result of these efforts was confirmed today with Felipe’s performance. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to fully exploit these improvements because we made a serious mistake in our Q1 assessment, believing that Kimi’s time would be good enough to get him through to the next session. It was a serious error that is truly regrettable. »

« We will try to make up for it tomorrow in the race where he will start from the back of the grid. Felipe has a good strategy and although we have to wait to see the fuel levels carried by the other drivers, we can hope for a podium finish. As usual, reliability will be priority number one. »