Brazil GP: Difficult to do better for the Ferrari drivers
Fernando Alonso and Kimi Räikkönen are not really thrilled with their starting positions tomorrow, 8th and 10th, for the Brazilian Grand Prix. However, they believe it was difficult to do much better, even though the battle with McLaren and Red Bull was tight.
Fernando Alonso will start from only the 8th place, and the Spaniard believes that this generally reflects the current performance of the F14-T, even though he might have done better: « Today’s result more or less reflects how the whole weekend went, although here, a tenth of a second can make the difference between 5th and 10th places. »
The Ferrari driver is quite confident for the race but knows he will have to be wary of the tires and the weather tomorrow: « Both compounds worked well but I’m sure graining and degradation will give us a hard time tomorrow. It will be a long race and, apart from reliability, the key factor will be tire management. »
Kimi Räikkönen kept saying he felt more comfortable in his red car this weekend but the Finnish driver could only manage the 10th fastest time in Q3: « This weekend, I had better sensations in the car and overall, I didn’t encounter any major problems, feeling more comfortable with the front. We lacked speed today and even though it was our fastest lap of the weekend, it wasn’t enough to finish higher on the grid. Obviously, I’m disappointed to be 10th. »
Pat Fry, chassis technical director, recognizes that Ferrari might have done better, but the most important thing remains tomorrow’s race: « The qualifying was very tight for us, as for Red Bull and McLaren, while once again at Interlagos, Williams and Mercedes proved that they had the best package. This was clear from Q2, when the gaps were very close from 5th to 10th place, with six drivers separated by only one-tenth. Kimi and Fernando didn’t make any mistakes and, even with these positions on the grid, we will try to seize all opportunities tomorrow.
