08/04/2007
NEWS STORY
Jean Todt: Definitely we are disappointed because after qualifying I think one car first, and third, we were expecting a better result and everybody could see that the race got compromised at the start, where Felipe did not do the best start he could have expected and the McLarens, two of them passed Felipe, one of them Kimi. Then you could all see an attempt to pass Hamilton and Felipe went wide and he got passed by two cars and then we couldn't manage to gain positions we know that we were facing very strong teams, which we know and simply, today, they were better and they deserve their success. Nothing to say. Next week, we will try to do a better job.
Kimi spoke of compromises to the car this afternoon, were they in terms of reduced engine revs or reduced aero potential?
JT: You all know that we had a concern because of the water leak in Australia so we did not see any evidence to change the engine, but we thought it was wiser to take that into consideration and not to get the utmost of the engine but we are talking about one tenth a lap. We have to figure out by lap time, so…
Was Felipe's engine run to maximum potential or was that to a similar level to Kimi's?
JT: He had no water leak in the last race. Incidentally, we changed Felipe's engine after the programme problem in the gearbox which he had, so I think his engine was quite fresh.
Even when you were running free of traffic, you didn't have the pace that everybody expected, especially after the test last week, so what made the difference between yesterday and today?
Luca Baldisserri: Yes, you're right, we will analyse our performance. As I said before, we approached the race being a little bit aggressive in qualifying, compared to our competitor. The start compromised this kind of race so we were behind people with more fuel and this forced us to put a little bit heavier car at the second stint, and as you can see from the data, I don't think Alonso raced that he was not racing, because Hamilton had been at the beginning of the race, created the gap, it was not possible to… unless overtaking and Felipe rightly tried to overtake him, and unfortunately he was not lucky. So a heavier car here is a penalty and that's the penalty that I think, at the end of the day, we must pay today. The car was not performing as Friday, not performing as the last test. We are analysing the data to understand why the package… we could not reproduce the car and tyres as last week and Friday. The only thing I would say again is this is a track where fuel effect is quite important and you measure the car performance comparing cars and you don't know on Friday how much fuel the other team was running so….
Did the change in the regulations regarding the floor or is there another explanation why Ferrari and McLaren were so much closer together over the weekend?
JT: I think the cars… I think Baldo will confirm that we had the same specification during qualifying yesterday as during the race.
Any problem at all at Kimi's first pit stop, because the length of time you stopped we thought he would run longer than that?
LB: Yeah, we had to analyse that. I haven't checked the video footage, but we have to understand. I have to check what happened exactly.
Were you surprised when the McLarens stopped for the first time. Were they later than you expected?
LB: Alonso or Hamilton (Both) Well, to be honest we knew that three tenths between Felipe and Alonso were about the difference that we had in Melbourne, if you consider the fuel difference in Melbourne in qualifying between Kimi and Alonso again, so what we estimated is to have Felipe and Alonso basically on the same strategy, and that was correct, it was one lap difference between the two, so at the end of the day, probably Hamilton was a bit slower so he had a little bit a package with more fuel.
You were long in traffic, how did it affect running offset. Did it affect the cooling in the end?
LB: I think this year the tyres have less grip than last year, so you definitely need the help of the downforce in order to have the performance of the car. To stay behind another car, you pay downforce and that is why I think this year we will pay more to stay behind other cars, so that is one of the things that unfortunately we have to address.
What are your feelings for Bahrain next weekend. Are you confident after the form you showed in testing there?
JT: I think we will be competitive. Three weeks earlier we were going to be unbeatable. We said it's not like that. Now it seems that it's completely finished. It's not completely like that. We have a car so I think we should be able to in Bahrain hopefully do a better start and be able to…
Have you got developments coming for Bahrain?
JT: Not Bahrain, Barcelona.
What went wrong at the start?
LB: Well, from our performance, from our data, nothing went wrong. We lost performance compared to the other one, that's for sure, so we had no particular issue. We had to see what happened especially close to turn one where Alonso was very very close to Felipe and Felipe didn't tuck in the corner.
Did you give Kimi full revs in the last lap to catch Hamilton?
LB: We had seen Hamilton struggling a bit, especially at the beginning of the last stint, and we asked Kimi to try to attack him but at the end of the day, we knew that, as Jean said before, this engine we compromised and we closed to him but it was not enough.
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