British GP - Ferrari - RaceAny hopes of challenging
Fernando Alonso for the British Grand Prix were over as the field exited Copse for the first time. Starting third
Michael Schumacher was unable to get the jump on
Kimi Raikkonen and was unable to find a way through until
the second round of stops. By this point, Alonso was over ten seconds up the road, a position he would maintain to the chequered flag.
Team-mate Felipe Massa started from fourth position but lost out to
Giancarlo Fisichella in the pit stops and brought his Ferrari home fifth.
Michael Schumacher“Second place was the best we could today, given our grid position. Although there were no real problems with the car this weekend, we were simply not quick enough to win. We must work very hard now to come back right from the next race. But all in all, we should still be pleased with these eight points. There are still ten races to go with a hundred points to play for. Even though I am twenty three points behind Alonso, I don’t think the fight for the championship is over. For much of the race I was behind Kimi even though I had more potential, which is why I feel this result is not so bad. The next two races take place on completely different types of track. It will be interesting to see who has the upper hand on these circuits. We have to try and get back on top.”
Felipe Massa
“Not exactly a great day for us.
We were hoping to be more competitive, but Renault showed itself to be very strong. I lost a place to Giancarlo in the way the pit stops played out. I don’t think I could have done better than this fifth place, which is reasonable. I did not have any particular problems during the race, even though I had no more sets of new tyres, having used all of them in free practice and qualifying. There are important developments on the way for the car and I hope they will allow us to raise our game.”
Ross Brawn
“Naturally, we hoped that with Michael we would make up at least two points, but we ended up losing them. However, things could have been worse and so we can be reasonably happy with the final result. We knew that Raikkonen would be a hard nut to crack. We tried to pass him at the first pit stop, but we did not manage it and so we had to wait for the second. We had a good car, the Bridgestone tyres delivered consistent performance, but we paid the price for how qualifying went and that made for a difficult race.”
Jean Todt
“It was a hard fought race, as indeed we had expected. Strategy played a decisive role: in a positive way for Michael, who managed to gain a place compared to his starting position on the grid and in a negative way for Felipe, who lost one. We are up against very strong opponents, but obviously when you are going for the win, coming second is reason enough to be disappointed. However, it also acts as a further stimulus to try and close the gap that separates us in terms of overall performance. That would allow us to qualify at the front and then be able to run an attacking race. There are still ten races to go to the end of the season. We will fight as hard as we can to reach our objectives, along with our partners, especially Bridgestone.”
Source Ferrari
