Turkish Grand Prix: Ferrari Team Review
May 11, 2008
Shell
Stefano Domenicali:
“We are very happy with this result, but we know it was a tough one to get. Felipe drovea great race and made the most of yesterday’s pole position, but given what happened at the start, Kimi’sresult in managing to get onto the podium, could have been a lot worse. It was yet another example of the factthat, in this sport, it takes very little for the pendulum to swing one way or the other.
We wanted to continuedown this winning path which started as a reaction to the heavy hit we took in Melbourne and we havemanaged it. We hope this is a nice wedding present for Clementina, the daughter of our President, Luca diMontezemolo! These sixteen points are the result of the work from the whole team at all levels and that is whywe chose Francesco Uguzzoni, the head mechanic to go on the podium and pick up the winning team trophy.Now we have to prepare maybe even more carefully for the next rounds: at Monaco and Canada last year, wesuffered a lot and we will have to do our best in preparing for these races, both in the test session at PaulRicard, from next Wednesday to Friday and in analyzing the data back in Maranello.”
Felipe Massa:
“Its fantastic to have got the hat trick here in Istanbul: it might really almost be worth asking fora Turkish passport! It was a very tough race but the team work magnificently, giving me a great car. WhenHamilton came underneath me at an incredible pace, I preferred not to take too many risks: the pit wallinformed he that he was cleary running a lighter fuel load even if we were not certain he was on a three stopstrategy. When that became clear, we were calmer, knowing we had everything in place to go for the win. Myengineer, Rob, guided my pace and I drove in such a way as to keep ahead of Lewis. Maybe the hard tyresworked better today, but from what we saw over the weekend, the softs were more competitive and in anycase, the difference was not that great. I want to dedicate this win to two people: to my mother on MothersDay and to Stefano Domenicali whose birthday it is today.”
Kimi Raikkonen:
“It was a difficult weekend for me but six points are definitely better than nothing. At thestart, I was almost alongside Heikki but then he slowed and I had to brake too to avoid a heavy crash. Wetouched just enough to damage the end plate of the front wing on my car: it was not a very serious problem,but it definitely didn’t help my race. My first set of soft tyres worked very well, but the second was not as good:for the rears, maybe it would have been better to switch immediately to the harder, but that’s easy to say withhindsight. After a less than great qualifying yesterday, we knew the race would be an uphill struggle. Now wemust ensure we are as well prepared as possible for the Monaco Grand Prix, where we struggled in 2007.This winter we worked a lot on the car to concentrate on those shortcomings which we saw at tracks like this.Now we will see if we did enough to be competitive.”
Luca Baldisserri:
“All in all, a really good result. We had the potential to get a one-two, but after whathappened at the start, we could have ended up with one car outside the points. The choice of when to usewhich tyre was based on data gathered in free practice and on past experience at this track, as well as alogical prediction of how the track surface would evolve. With hindsight, it is easy to say that we could havegone for a different choice. The team worked well and the cars ran trouble free, which included amongst otherthings, successfully completing the useage cycle of four races for the gearbox: for this and for their usualtechnical contribution I would like to thank Shell especially. Now we can expect two tricky races, where lastyear we were not competitive enough to win. We have worked a lot to remedy the problems which we hadthere and now we will find out if we have worked in the right direction.”
