Assessment: A start to the season not as good as hoped for Ferrari

The two Ferrari drivers reached the finish today, but not in the positions they were aiming for. Fernando Alonso finished 4th while Felipe Massa only managed to finish in eighth place.

Fernando Alonso – 4th: In a race like this, anything can happen. We made 5 stops which is completely unusual, but I think we made the right choices at the right times. With this kind of race, you’ll only understand at the end if you made the best decision. I made a serious mistake at the beginning, my reflexes let me down and I started too early. It had never happened to me, and I am really disappointed in myself. But luckily, I managed to finish 4th. The overtaking on Felipe? If it hadn’t been my teammate, it would have made much less noise. For me, it’s a normal overtaking and it won’t compromise our relationship. We have good potential, and we hope to have some normal races like those in Bahrain. The championship is starting well: we have shown that we are competitive on all circuits and we have what it takes to win the title. McLaren deserves first place, considering that even if they don’t have the best car, they have maximized its potential every time.

Felipe Massa – 8th: « It was a really complicated race, and I’m not really satisfied with my result. Of course, two points are better than nothing, but in the upcoming races, we need to do better, and that means working on the development of the car. From the start, it was difficult to make the right tire choice with the weather changing all the time.

For the overtaking of Fernando, I went over a puddle in the hairpin turn, which made me lose a bit of control of the car. He managed to overtake me and enter the pits before I did. I lost a few positions because of that, as I had to wait for him to finish his stop. In the last laps, I struggled a lot with my tires, but Michael even more so, so I managed to overtake him. This weekend, we saw how the situation can change drastically from one race to another, we need to work as hard as possible to maximize our potential.

Stefano Domenicali – Team Principal: « First of all, I want to congratulate the pit team, who did a fantastic job today with the number of stops by our drivers without any errors. For strategy choice, especially for the first stop, it was difficult to know what the best thing to do was. In hindsight, Button made a better choice, but without his penalty, Fernando could certainly have fought for victory. For the overtaking involving Fernando and Felipe, we only saw it afterward on TV, but I think it’s just a racing incident, and there will be no problem between our two drivers. When you are on your way to victory, you have moments like that. We have some regrets about this start of the championship, we could have had much more, but due to sometimes avoidable incidents, we did not. That said, we are still fighting for both titles, and this is important. Now we need to continue the development of the car to improve our qualifying and get back on the podium, which is absolutely possible. »

To recall the facts concerning Fernando Alonso’s overtake of Felipe Massa, during the second wave of tire changes, Alonso overtook Massa on the access lane to the pits, crossing a white line, and was able to change tires before the Brazilian driver, who was therefore forced to wait behind his teammate, losing precious seconds, which probably cost him several positions. Is a new struggle emerging within the Scuderia between Alonso and Massa?