Saturday: Massa destroys his Ferrari and his new wing on a curb
A rather contrasting qualifying session for Scuderia Ferrari. Fernando Alonso will start from 3rd place on the grid tomorrow, which was quite unexpected for the Spaniard and the Italian team, even though the 150° Italia seemed competitive since Friday. However, the double world champion is not aiming for victory because he knows the Red Bull is equally competitive. As for Felipe Massa, things didn't go as well. The Brazilian driver broke his front right suspension in a collision with a curb, damaging the new wing brought by Ferrari to India. Nonetheless, he will start from 6th place on the grid and knows he has a good car for the race.
Fernando Alonso – 5th and 3rd
It was important to be on the first two rows, as it’s easier to fight for a good result from there. I don’t think there is an advantage for one side over the other because the ideal racing line at the start is in the middle, so both sides are dirty. In fact, the off-line dust could be a problem for overtaking as it will require overtaking without hesitation. So far, the weekend has gone as planned, and we will try to continue doing a good job tomorrow. It would be nice to bring home one of the trophies that will be awarded on the podium of the first Formula 1 Grand Prix of India. I was really close to the front row, which is quite surprising. In the last few qualifying sessions, we hadn’t managed to be as close to our rivals, and yesterday we already seemed competitive. In general, our performance is better on Sundays, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we will be able to fight for the win. There are too many unknowns, even more than usual, and we also saw that things could change a lot from one track to another. In Suzuka, we were close to victory, and in Singapore, we were not competitive at all. We will still give our best.
Felipe Massa – 6th and 6th
What happened on my last fast lap is really unfortunate. Today, we had the opportunity to secure a good position, as Fernando demonstrated and as you can see with my sixth place with a rather slow third sector. I came into turn 8 and the front right suspension broke after contact with the orange part that sticks out, and in my opinion, this part is too high at that spot. It’s a very fast turn, taken at about 215 km/h, and it could be done differently. These are details to improve for next year. I repeat myself, but I’m really disappointed because the car has been very good throughout the weekend. Now I’m left with one less set of soft tires and a damaged front wing. It was the new one, which we had here for the first time and it provided a slight performance gain. Tomorrow, it will be difficult to overtake because of the dust off the racing line, but I think we will see some action.
Stefano Domenicali – Director of Scuderia Ferrari
«First of all, I would like to congratulate the organizers of this Grand Prix. Bringing Formula 1 to India is a great achievement, and Bernie Ecclestone deserves to be congratulated. This country is growing fast, even if there are strong contrasts (in terms of income, notably), but never before have we seen our sport welcomed with such enthusiasm and interest from the public. Regarding the qualifying session, I must say that the performance of our car is good: being only a tenth off the front row – with Vettel once again untouchable – means that we are not too bad on this circuit. We are obviously disappointed for Felipe, who has been very fast all weekend: accidents like that happen, but the most important thing is that the driver is okay. Generally, our race pace is better than in qualifying: let’s hope this will also be the case tomorrow and that we can leave India with a good result.»
