One-two for Ferrari at Istanbul
Sixth win of the season, the third for Felipe Massa. Today's was the second win from the three Turkish Grands Prix held to date, the first also going to the Brazilian driver, who has now scored five victories from 83 race starts. It brings Ferrari's race win total to 198 from 753 Grands Prix. Felipe and Kimi took their second one-two finish as Ferrari drivers, while it was the 74th in the history of the Scuderia.
Jean Todt: "Sixth victory of the year and the second one-two after the one in Magny-Cours. This was a dream race and a dream result which should make us all happy; drivers, team and fans. I want to thank all our commercial and technical partners, especially Shell. As we had expected, it was a very tough and closely contested race right from the start. In this job, you must never give up because things can change very quickly and today that change worked in our favour. In less than two weeks, we will be on track in Monza for our home race. The effort we will put in will be the same because we will be after an identical result to this one, while remaining aware of the difficulty of the task and the competitiveness of our closest rivals."
Felipe Massa: "This is becoming a special place for me! It is a really great win! I maintained my concentration for the whole race, trying to control the situation. Only towards the end of the second stint did I make a small mistake at Turn 7 which cost me the gap I had over Kimi, who closed right up to me. I made a very good start and the car behaved perfectly even though it has to be said it was a difficult race. Today's result is a great encouragement when looking to the final part of the season. It is fantastic to head to Monza after a weekend like this. We must continue to work in this same way and give it our best shot."
Kimi Raikkonen: "Of course I would like to have won but probably the race was decided in yesterday afternoon's qualifying session. When your main rival is your team-mate, there are less unknown factors and even less room to come up with something. However, the important thing is to have put two Ferraris in front of everyone else and, in any case, we have made up ground on the championship leader. I got a good start then I had a bit of understeer which went away after a few laps. The second set of tyres did not work as well as the first. The quick lap at the end? I was a bit bored with spending the whole race behind another car and so I tried to see how quick I could have been. In Monza I will have to try and do a good qualifying to be in the best possible situation for the race."
Luca Baldisserri: "It was a great race which brought us the maximum result possible. All the team worked perfectly and the cars were at their best. We also got useful support from our technical partners, such as Shell, who provided us here with a new gearbox oil. We chose to start with the softer tyres because in Friday's free practice, we saw that their performance was very good, even on a long run. The start was very important, with both drivers doing a great job. Now we look to the race in Monza, where we must try and repeat this performance. The one-two is one of the few result combinations that allows us to close the gap in both classifications."
