11/05/2008
NEWS STORY
Fourth consecutive win of the season for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, the second for Felipe Massa. This is victory number 205 from 763 Grand Prix starts for Ferrari, the seventh from 93 starts for Felipe.
Stefano Domenicali: We are very happy with this result, but we know it was a tough one to get. Felipe drove a great race and made the most of yesterday's pole position, but given what happened at the start, Kimi's result in managing to get onto the podium, could have been a lot worse. It was yet another example of the fact that, in this sport, it takes very little for the pendulum to swing one way or the other. We wanted to continue down this winning path which started as a reaction to the heavy hit we took in Melbourne and we have managed it. We hope this is a nice wedding present for Clementina, the daughter of our President, Luca di Montezemolo! These sixteen points are the result of the work from the whole team at all levels and that is why we 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, we suffered a lot and we will have to do our best in preparing for these races, both in the test session at Paul Ricard, 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 for a Turkish passport! It was a very tough race but the team work magnificently, giving me a great car. When Hamilton came underneath me at an incredible pace, I preferred not to take too many risks: the pit wall informed he that he was cleary running a lighter fuel load even if we were not certain he was on a three stop strategy. When that became clear, we were calmer, knowing we had everything in place to go for the win. My engineer, Rob, guided my pace and I drove in such a way as to keep ahead of Lewis. Maybe the hard tyres worked better today, but from what we saw over the weekend, the softs were more competitive and in any case, the difference was not that great. I want to dedicate this win to two people: to my mother on Mothers Day 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 the start, I was almost alongside Heikki but then he slowed and I had to brake too to avoid a heavy crash. We touched 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 with hindsight. After a less than great qualifying yesterday, we knew the race would be an uphill struggle. Now we must 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 what happened at the start, we could have ended up with one car outside the points. The choice of when to use which tyre was based on data gathered in free practice and on past experience at this track, as well as a logical prediction of how the track surface would evolve. With hindsight, it is easy to say that we could have gone for a different choice. The team worked well and the cars ran trouble free, which included amongst other things, successfully completing the useage cycle of four races for the gearbox: for this and for their usual technical contribution I would like to thank Shell especially. Now we can expect two tricky races, where last year we were not competitive enough to win. We have worked a lot to remedy the problems which we had there and now we will find out if we have worked in the right direction.