Ninth and eleventh places for Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa respectively: that was the outcome of qualifying at the British Grand Prix for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro. Thanks to a good performance in Q2, Kimi managed to get through to the final part of the session, but then was unable to do better than ninth, while Felipe didn’t get into Q3, because of a mistake in the third sector of the track, which cost him precious time. “Clearly this is a bad result,” but frankly we hadn’t expected much better,” commented Stefano Domenicali. “It’s pointless to look for one specific element to blame: this is our current rating in this sort of temperature range and on a track with so many fast corners. The car does not have enough aerodynamic downforce to generate the required grip through the tyres. Having said that, we must not lose heart. We know we face having to try and race our way up the order tomorrow, trying to bring home some useful points for the classification.”

Felipe Massa:
“Not a great weekend for us, there’s no point denying it. Today I missed out on getting into Q3 because I made a mistake in the final sector. Up until then, I was a few tenths up on my previous best time. We must always push to the limit because the car doesn’t give you a margin to make it through in qualifying and that can lead to one making mistakes. The F60 feels balanced but we are not quick enough. In the last two races, some teams have made significant progress in their development, while we haven’t improved our performance enough. It will be a hard race, but maybe something will happen that could see us getting a good result. From our side, all we can do is give it our best shot and try all the time.”

Kimi Raikkonen:
“To be honest, I didn’t expect much more. This is our current performance level and today it was difficult to do any better. Each weekend we try our best: again on this track, the F60 was well balanced but, as we have seen so often this year, we don’t have enough grip. I did a good lap in Q2 but, with race fuel on board, the car was not as quick as the others. We have improved the car in these last two races, but it seems the others have taken a bigger step forward than we have.”

Chris Dyer:
“Definitely not a very exciting result, but it matches what we had expected from yesterday. We have improved the performance of the car since then, but not enough to fight it out with the best. Tomorrow’s race will definitely be very difficult for us. We will try and do our best to get both cars home in the points.”

Image (c) Bridgestone Corporation

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