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A tough
season has not got any easier for Scuderia Ferrari this weekend: Kimi
Raikkonen and Felipe Massa
will this afternoon start what could be the
last British Grand Prix to
be held at Silverstone, from
the fifth and sixth rows of
the grid, with Kimi
Raikkonen lining up ninth,
directly ahead of team-mate
Felipe Massa in eleventh
place.
Three words
sum up the problems faced by
the Ferrari drivers, the same problem
that has dogged them for
much of this year – lack of
grip. Running the same
Bridgestone tyre compounds
as in Turkey a fortnight
ago, but at much lower
ambient and track
temperatures, getting them
to work was always going to
be difficult, as the F60 in
its current form isn’t
generating enough downforce
from its aero package to
stick the tyres to the track
surface and make them work
at their best.
The man who
did make the best job of it
yesterday in qualifying was Sebastian Vettel,
who claimed his and Red Bull
Renault’s third pole of the
2009 season, and the German’s career
fourth. Always something of
a Silverstone specialist,
Rubens Barrichello will also
start from the front row
tomorrow in the
first of the Brawn-Mercedes, while third
place went to the other Red
Bull of Mark Webber. The
Australian is joined on the
second row by Jarno Trulli
in the Toyota, while Row 3
features Kazuki Nakajima in
the Williams – Toyota,
alongside series leader and
crowd favourite at his home
race, Jenson Button. At
least Kimi is in good
company on Row 5 as it is
reserved for World
Champions! He shares it with
the Renault of Fernando
Alonso. One row further
back, Felipe has Robert
Kubica’s BMW alongside him.
As Felipe
said after the session
yesterday, it will need some
exceptional circumstances in
the race, to help the
Ferrari duo move up the
field. At the moment, it
does not look as though this
help could come from the
weather, because although
there was a short shower
today, no rain is forecast
for this
afternoon, when the eighth
round of the world
championship gets underway
at 13h00 local time.
“Clearly this is a
bad result,” but frankly we hadn’t
expected much better,” commented Stefano
Domenicali. “It’s pointless to look for
one specific element to blame: this is
our current rating in this sort of
temperature range and on a track with so
many fast corners. The car does not have
enough aerodynamic downforce to generate
the required grip through the tyres.
Having said that, we must not lose
heart. We know we face having to try and
race our way up the order tomorrow,
trying to bring home some useful points
for the classification.”
Felipe Massa:
“Not a great weekend for us, there’s no
point denying it. I missed out on
getting into Q3 because I made a mistake
in the final sector. Up until then, I
was a few tenths up on my previous best
time. We must always push to the limit
because the car doesn’t give you a
margin to make it through in qualifying
and that can lead to one making
mistakes. The F60 feels balanced but we
are not quick enough. In the last two
races, some teams have made significant
progress in their development, while we
haven’t improved our performance enough.
It will be a hard race, but maybe
something will happen that could see us
getting a good result. From our side,
all we can do is give it our best shot
and try all the time.”
Kimi Raikkonen:
“To be honest, I didn’t expect much
more. This is our current performance
level and it was difficult to do
any better. Each weekend we try our
best: again on this track, the F60 was
well balanced but, as we have seen so
often this year, we don’t have enough
grip. I did a good lap in Q2 but, with
race fuel on board, the car was not as
quick as the others. We have improved
the car in these last two races, but it
seems the others have taken a bigger
step forward than we have.”
Chris Dyer:
“Definitely not a very exciting result,
but it matches what we had expected from
yesterday. We have improved the
performance of the car since then, but
not enough to fight it out with the
best. Tomorrow’s race will definitely be
very difficult for us. We will try and
do our best to get both cars home in the
points.”
Qualifying session
Felipe Massa: 11° 1.18.927 9 Laps
Kimi Raikkonen: 9° 1.20.715 7 Laps
Chassis: F. Massa 277, K. Raikkonen
279
Weather: air temperature 17/18 °C, track
temperature 21/22 °C, cloudy.
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