Ferrari not competitive enough to win at Monaco
It was a difficult race at Monaco for the Scuderia Ferrari today. Felipe Massa was albe to preserve his third position as team mate Kimi Raikkonen had to battle himself a way through to pack. The Finn started from 16th position and finished 8th, scoring one point.
Jean Todt "As we had expected this was a very tough race for us. On a track where overtaking is almost impossible, we saw the top four cars on the grid finishing in the same order. Kimi, who started from down the back, could only pin his hopes on a good strategy to try and get a good result, but after spending nearly the whole time in traffic, he only managed to bring home a single point.We must congratulate those who, today, were quicker than us and work to get back to being competitive at the highest level right from the start of the two consecutive races in Canada and the USA."
Felipe Massa "I think this was the best possible result I could have got today, given the pace of our closest rivals. At half distance, given the situation, I concentrated on just managing my race and bringing the car home. These six points are very important: the championship is still very open and there is still a very long way to go. We tried to see if we could change the situation by using the extra soft tyres in the second stint of the race, but it did not make much difference. The main problem today was the traffic: I lost a lot of time behind backmarkers, but I don't think that had any effect on the final result. Today we were the inferior of the two teams, but we have all we need to get back to winning again, right from the next race."
Kimi Raikkonen "We knew we were facing an uphill battle and that's how things turned out. I got a good start, quickly moving up to twelfth, but from then on I was nearly always in traffic, never getting any chance to overtake. I never had a clear track ahead of me and it was only thanks to the strategy that I was able to make up some more places and get into the points, but I couldn't do any better. Obviously the situation in the classification is now a bit more complicated but there is still a long way to go in the championship and I am not the sort to give up."
Luca Baldisserri "Today we were not competitive enough to win. We tried to change things about a bit with Felipe, switching to the extra-soft tyres at the first stop but this choice didn't pay off. Even so, we don't think this would have changed the result. Kimi faced a very difficult race starting from sixteenth place. He made a good start but then he spent nearly the whole time in traffic and the point for eighth place was the best he could do. We have to study the situation and understand why our rivals were better than us, before tackling the double header in North America in better shape so that we can fight for the wins."
