Formula 1 News

Stefano Domenicali: “A Sunday to forget” 

Scuderia Ferrari left a damp Silverstone following Sunday’s Grand Prix with five points and a sour taste after what team principal Stefano Domenicali described as ‘a Sunday to forget.’ Having said that, the Italian was also taking a positive angle from it. “It’s also a Sunday that we need to remember – not only a Sunday – a weekend that we need to remember in order to be focused on the job that we have to do at home. Really, all of us are looking forward to the next race weekend because for sure this is not our standard, and that, for sure, it is something that we would like to avoid, but that’s racing,” he said.

Weather forecasting played a big part in picking the right pit stop strategy at the right time. “It was very close because that was the key point,” explained Domenicali. “Unfortunately weather is very unpredictable, it’s changing very quickly. For sure we need to think how to be more pro-active on that specific point. We didn’t put too much fuel in Raikkonen’s car, because at that moment, you could have expected the track conditions to be getting better and better. Then you arrive at a moment when you need to swap the tyres maybe to dry conditions, you never know, because that’s the consideration that you have to have in mind when you decide the length of the second stint. Of course, at that moment, we didn’t change the tyres because that was our thinking on the evolution of the track and we also saw the other two drivers who didn’t change in those two laps were quite good, so that was the reason why we didn’t change. And of course, retrospectively, it was the wrong decision.”

“I think it was a difficult race for Massa,” said the Italian following the Brazilian’s disastrous performance at Silverstone. “Of course the thing that we need to bear in mind is that it was the team’s fault not to give him the chance to do another run yesterday in qualifying. It’s always difficult to have a nice race when you are in the middle of the field in these conditions. Then of course, after the first pit stop, the race, as we said, because of the situation, was almost over.”

“The good point in a way is that there is a very tight situation in the championship and that’s frustrating in a way because of course with all these lost points, our main competitors are very close to us,” continued Domenicali. “We need to look ahead and work, keep the head up so we may have these Sundays. We need to be really focused for the next Grand Prix.” he added.

“I’ve always said since the beginning it will be a very tight championship,” pointed out the Italian. “I was laughing, in a way, when I saw before the weekend that people were saying, ok, this Silverstone, you can fly away into the distance. We know that it’s not possible, it’s not true. The only thing that we can say is that of course if we put on one side the performance of the car and on the other side the reliability, speaking of all things apart from performance, this is something that we need to think about carefully because a lot of points went away in that respect, so it will be a very challenging second part of the season.”

source: Ferrari