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Felipe Massa
and Kimi Raikkonen ended the first day of practice for
the ninth round of the world championship in eighth and
twelfth places respectively and as the reigning world
champion pointed out, this is not an accurate reflection
on the relative strengths of the team. However, this
was not the best of days for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro.
Although he set the fastest time, the morning session
did not go well for Felipe. He was caught out by a long
line of oil that had just been left on the entrance to a
corner by Alonso's Renault, lost grip and spun backwards
into the barrier at high speed. His F2008 had been
travelling at 290 km/h prior to the spin. A small fire
broke out at the back and the marshals extinguished it,
as the driver got out of the cockpit uninjured. The
incident was a good example of how, while the level of
passive safety of the drivers has increased enormously
thanks to the efforts of the FIA, this is still a
dangerous sport and the active safety, in terms of how
quickly track officials warn drivers of unusual
conditions ahead, is a vital part of the overall safety
package. The Ferrari mechanics worked flat out in the
break between the two sessions to repair the damage and
Felipe was able to go out for the final hour of the
afternoon session. As for Raikkonen, he found his F2008
had not retained the qualities it had shown here in
testing last week.
So, after a long morning of hard work for the mechanics
who rebuilt Massa's car, there will now follow a long
evening of study for the engineers as they look at all
the data to find the best way to move forward prior to
tomorrow's final hour of free practice and then
qualifying. Our close rivals, McLaren-Mercedes were on
strong form, with Heikki Kovalainen quickest this
afternoon and Lewis Hamilton third. In between them was
the Red Bull-Renault of Mark Webber, while the
Australian's team-mate, David Coulthard was fourth, thus
pleasing the crowd with two British drivers in the top
four. In fifth place was the Williams-Toyota of Nico
Rosberg, while in sixth was Sebastian Vettel for the
Ferrari-powered Toro Rosso team.
The big news story today came courtesy of an FIA press
statement announcing that as from 2010, the British
Grand Prix would move to the Donington Park circuit,
which last saw F1 cars in action when it hosted the 1993
European Grand Prix.
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."
Free practice - First session
F. Massa: 1st 1.19.575 8 laps chassis 267
K. Raikkonen: 4th 1.19.948 16 laps chassis 270
Weather: air temperature 20 °C, track temperature 27/28
°C, cloudy.
Free Practice - Second session
F. Massa: 8th 1.20.943 18 laps chassis 267
K. Raikkonen: 12th 1.21.275 31 laps chassis 270
Weather: air temperature 23/25 °C, track temperature
29/37 °C, partially cloudy.
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