Ferrari praises its car, but rues its fortunes
Ferrari showed satisfying and promising speed over the course of the weekend of the Japanese GP, but penalties for both its drivers hampered its chances in its fight for podium places which meant it could not show the full performance of the car.
Ferrari drivers Kimi Räikkönen and Sebastian Vettel secured third and fourth places consecutively in Saturday’s qualifying session and got beaten ony by 3 tenths of a second by Mercedes. However, three places were immediately added to Vettel’s grid position as the German was deemed to be guilty in a clash with Nico Rosberg in the opening part of the previous GP in Malaysia.
Kimi Räikkönen was hoping for a good result after posting good lap times in every practice and qualifying session. The Finn’s hopes were curtailed right before the race as his team discovered a failure in his gearbox.
As it had to be replaced, Räikkönen was penalized with a five-place grid drop which meant that he had to start the race from the eighth position.
“After a good qualifying yesterday, the issue with the gearbox and the consequent starting position change was not ideal in this kind of track. Obviously there’s a lot of disappointment, as we had a good car and if we could have stayed in front we would have fought with more free air and with a lot of speed.”
“I had a good start but then I got stuck behind other people: it was really tricky to follow other cars and it affected quite a bit the behavior. It was also difficult to stay close to them and attack them. Once we got past them and I was on my own, the car was quick and handling well. For sure today we were fast enough for a better result. Unfortunately that’s how it goes,” the 2007 champion sounded disheartened.
Sebastian Vettel had a mesmerizing start which enabled him to make up some ground right after the lights went out. The German, then, passed Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull and Sergio Perez’ Force India on the track and found himself in the third position.
”We had a very good start and made good progress in the first two laps, passing Ricciardo and Perez, then we were faster than Verstappen. I think today we had the second fastest car. So it was a question of time, but obviously Max came in as soon as he could to maintain track position, which worked well for him.
Ferrari went for an aggressive strategy for Vettel in the final stint which did not pay off in the end. As the team left the German too long out on the track while he had to fight his way through the ring of backmarkers, Lewis Hamilton could overtake him with an ‘undercut’.
“We tried to go on the softer tire in the end, which initially we thought would work well, but then we had too much degradation and we were falling off this group. It is always easy to criticize, and I am sure there are many ‘experts’ that knew better, but on the pitwall as well as in the car, I was keen to go for this strategy so to extend the second stint.”
The Heppenheim-born driver sounded rather annoyed on the team radio when he was lapping some backmarkers, but he suggested that it was only down to the adrenalin pumping through his veins. Indeed, he thinks the problems was that he caught the backmarkers in the first sector where it is hard to let someone go due to the flowing nature of that part of the track.
“It’s a fact I lost big chunks of time with the blue flags. I always got the lapped cars right in sector one, when they can’t move, so I was losing a lot of time, and there’s probably where I lost track position to Lewis, who always seemed to clear the lapped cars in the straight. But then the pace wouldn’t have probably been enough to challenge for the podium,” concluded Vettel.
