Felipe Massa concedes that his Ferrari F60 is simply not quick enough at the moment as he and teammate Kimi Raikkonen endured another mediocre qualifying hour in Silverstone.
The Brazilian will start Sunday’s British Grand Prix from eleventh place, just missing out on a place in the top ten despite several flying laps on both tyre compounds in the closing stages of Q2.
Kimi Raikkonen managed to haul his Ferrari into the shoot-out but the best he could muster was ninth place.
The flowing, high-speed Silverstone circuit has traditionally suited Ferrari with Kimi Raikkonen dominating the race in 2007, but as today’s qualifying session illustrated, Ferrari, like rivals McLaren, are on the back foot this year with their aerodynamic development.
Felipe Massa – 11th: “Not a great weekend for us, there’s no point denying it. Today 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 – 9th: “To be honest, I didn’t expect much more. This is our current performance level and today 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.”
Stefano Domenicali: “Clearly this is a bad result. 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.”
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.”
