First round of the championship and first victory for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro. On his debut in a Maranello car, Kimi Raikkonen secured the Scuderia’s seventh win in this race, thus bringing the total number of victories to 193 in 742 Grand Prix participations. This was the tenth time from 106 starts that Kimi has been the first past the chequered flag.
Jean Todt:
“That was an exciting Grand Prix! We started with our drivers at opposite ends of the grid, with Kimi on pole and Felipe in last place because of an electrical problem in the gearbox management that had hampered his qualifying yesterday. Both of them put on a great performance. Kimi maintained his first place after the start and then did a very good job of managing the race, while Felipe staged a great climb through the field to take him up to sixth place. A new chapter in Ferrari’s history has got off to a very good start. The chassis-engine package proved to be competitive, the team worked with dedicated professionalism and the drivers were impeccable. This all means that we can look forward to the rest of the championship with prudent optimism, even if we have seen there is some very strong and well prepared opposition and some very talented young drivers. We have not yet reached the desired level of reliability and we have to do a lot of work on this as well as on improving our performance. I was very happy to get two telephone calls, the first from Michael as I was going up to the podium, which I handed to Kimi and the other from Luca di Montezemolo who was jumping for joy as if this was our first win in a decade. And indeed that is the feeling for us all! “
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