Ferrari: A podium in Monza

Monza – Scuderia Ferrari’s home race was very exciting right from the start. Kimi Raikkonen had a difficult getaway and dropped down to the back, after which he fought his way up the order to fifth place at the flag. Sebastian Vettel moved into second at the start and managed to stay there right to the finish, behind the winner, Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes. Third was Felipe Massa for Williams.

Maurizio Arrivabene: “This time I see the glass half full. Sebastian’s race to second place was unbelievable. His contribution to the team so far has been outstanding. As for Kimi, he had a great qualifying yesterday, then maybe he messed up a bit at the start of the race. But afterwards he was able to pass a lot of cars on the track with a fantastic race. Ideally, we would have hoped for two good starts, but we’re happy anyway with this weekend.

We came here investing a few tokens on our Power Unit and we’re satisfied with our gain, also in terms of reliability. In the forthcoming races, the gap to our main competitors will depend much on the kind of track. We will keep on working with humility and determination to the end of the season, trying to jump on every opportunity”.

Kimi Raikkonen: “I don’t know exactly what happened at the start. As far as I know I did everything correctly, but the car went into the antistall and did not move at all. I still don’t have the right explanation about what happened, but it’s a really bad thing that cost us a lot today. If you start from second place and after a few seconds you’re in last position it’s not easy to see the positive side of the race: we wasted a big opportunity to fight at the front. The car has been working well all weekend and also in the race the behavior was good. We made the best out of it and in the end I managed to come up fifth.

Obviously I’m a bit disappointed, as we were hoping for a better result in our home race in front of all our fans, but if we think that after the first hundred metres we were last it was still a good result. Overall we had a pretty good speed all weekend so in a way we have to be happy for what we have done because here we were expecting more difficulties. Today I was positively surprised that we could get through some cars that are very fast on the straights, this shows that we are doing the right things, pushing the car in the right direction and improving in all areas”.

Sebastian Vettel: “It’s an incredible day, it’s the best second place I ever had in Formula One. Thanks to all the tifosi for giving me those emotions today on the podium: it’s fantastic to see so many fans, feel the support we get as a team. It just makes our lives so much more worth living when you see all the fans coming underneath the podium. In terms of emotions it’s more than a victory. It’s nearly a perfect day: I’m saying nearly because I don’t know what happened to Kimi at the start.

It’s a shame because otherwise I believe we could have both cars on the podium today. The speed was there, unfortunately not enough to win, but we’ve tried everything. Monza is known to be a power track and we all know how dominant Mercedes was here last year. I believe the engine guys have done a great job. There are for sure things that we need to improve: we’ll do step by step. Tyres were ok for the whole weekend.”

Scuderia Ferrari