Ferrari reasonably satisfied with qualifying
Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa secured 6th and 7th places in qualifying ahead of the Turkish Grand Prix. The team was generally satisfied with the car's performance, although work needs to be done on the setup with high fuel load.
Kimi Raikkonen, 6th: “In qualifying the car was better balanced than in free practice but, even on a light fuel load, today we were a bit slower than the best. All weekend we have struggled a bit to get the tyres working at their best on the first lap. For sure, starting from the dirty side of the grid won’t be easy, especially on a track like this, which is hardly ever used for racing, which means the track surface offers little grip off the racing line. We have made progress recently, but the others have also done the same, which is what always happens.”
Felipe Massa, 7th: “On low fuel, the car was well balanced and had good grip, while once we had the race fuel on board, the situation got worse and we suffered oversteer, mainly on the softer tyre. Honestly, I’d expected to start higher up the grid, especially as we were pretty competitive in Q1 and Q2. Starting from seventh, it becomes tough to aim for the top, so we have to be realistic. However, we mustn’t forget this will be a long race and anything can happen. As usual, I will give it my best shot.”
Stefano Domenicali: “This was a reasonable qualifying, even if it did not quite come up to our expectations. From what we saw over the course of the day, we can say that we did not get the maximum out of the potential available to us, especially in Q3. Having said that, we can expect a very tough and open race: we have a good strategy and we will try to exploit that to pick up a good result.”
Chris Dyer: “It was a very close qualifying, especially at the top end of the time sheet. The cars ran trouble free all day: the major difficulty concerned tyre choice. In the end, we opted for the softer compound and all in all, we believe that was the right choice, even if the difference in performance between the two over the first timed lap was not as marked as on other occasions.”
