As his team heads off to Hungary, despite Fernando Alonos losing out to Lewis Hamilton on Sunday, Stefano Domenicali takes nothing but positives from the German GP.

"In the cold light of day we can confirm that the German Grand Prix was a positive one for us," he told his team's website. "We scored more points than our opponents and I believe that we had the potential to take even more.

"I'm especially sorry for Felipe," he continued, "who lost a good fourth place right at the end because of a problem with the nut on his left front wheel. That means there is no doubt that we have also made good steps forward in the area of track operations."

The numbers certainly support Domenicali's claim, Alonso having some of the best stops of the day. Indeed, the Spaniard lost a total of 1.00.440 in the pit lane for his three stops, three-tenths of a second better than Vettel, five-tenths better than Schumacher and 1.4 seconds better than race winner Lewis Hamilton. Though Massa had a total time of 1.02.432 and the problem at his last pit stop cost him a position, a glance elsewhere shows Webber was not very quick either (1.02.063), further confirmation that perfection is always difficult to reach in any area.

"I would like to congratulate Fernando again as he is putting together a series of excellent results," the Italian continued, "so much so that he has the most points of anyone in the last three races. We have confirmed that we are also competitive in weather conditions that are not favourable and this is important. Certainly if we had had temperatures that aren't even like summer - but at least like spring - I think that we could have had more chance! What we can do instead is to improve the way in which the car gets temperature into the tyres: it's an aspect that is increasingly important, as we clearly saw yesterday at the second pit stop.

"We had managed to get Fernando out onto the track ahead of both Webber and Hamilton but he couldn't defend as he would have liked from the Englishman's attack - simply because the tyres were too cold. The same happened in an even more pronounced way at Silverstone because the track was also wet.

"Traditionally our cars are easier on tyres, a factor that offers an advantage over long distances as we have seen this year, but it is harder for us to get them up to ideal working temperature. Now we'll have to find a compromise between these two demands, a job that is certainly not straightforward."