Niggly Friday for Ferrari
A rather niggly Friday for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro. This morning there was Felipe Massa's accident, when he lost control of the car under braking going into turn 7, because of oil dropped on the racing line by Alonso's car.
It ended with Massa's car in the barriers and while fortunately the driver was uninjured, the car suffered heavy damage. Thanks to the work of the team, Felipe's car was repaired and the Brazilian managed to get out on track in the second session. Kimi had no particular problems but, especially in the afternoon, he was unable to get the car well balanced. "First and foremost I want to praise our mechanics, who did an extraordinary job in repairing Felipe's car," commented the Team Principal of the Gestione Sportiva, Stefano Domenicali. "Given the amount of damage and the short time available they were really great. On the technical front, it was not a totally satisfactory day. Of course, we lost some time with Felipe, who despite everything said he was reasonably happy with the handling of his car, while the same could not be said for Kimi, especially in the second session. Now we must study the data very carefully to be sure we make the right choices for the rest of the weekend, keeping in mind the weather, given that rain is forecast for the next two days."
Kimi Raikkonen: "This morning things were not so bad, while in the afternoon I had a bit of a struggle to find the best settings on the car, which was not working as well as it had done at last week's test. We have to look at the data to understand why. Obviously, the order in the second session is not representative of the relative strengths in the field. But I am still reasonably confident and if we manage to find a good set-up, then we can fight for the top places."
Felipe Massa: "It was a big crash, but that's part of the game and I have had much worse accidents in my career. I didn't see any flags and I had approached the corner in the usual way and then I totally lost control of the car under braking. I tried to slow down, but the impact was still pretty violent. The most important thing is that we were able to fix the car and in the end we didn't lose that much time as it wasn't planned for me to do many laps in the morning. I want to thank all the lads for the work they did: they were fantastic and they didn't stop for a moment right up to the very end of the second session. We came to Silverstone with a good starting point after the tests we did here last week and I think we are going in the right direction. I am pleased with the balance of the car and its performance on both types of tyre we have here from Bridgestone."
Luca Baldisserri: "We struggled a bit today. This morning we had Felipe going off the track which did serious damage to his car. Fortunately, thanks to an exceptional job from the team, we managed to put the car back together and get the driver out on track with an hour remaining of the second session. Kimi was unable to find the best set-up on his car, so we can expect a bit of work now to be as well prepared as possible for tomorrow. From what we saw today, and from the data we gathered last week, we have a significant amount of information to study to be ready for qualifying and for the race, while keeping in mind the fact the weather could be bad."
