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F1: McLaren Getting Stronger, Says Ferrari’s Domenicali
Written by: Adam Cooper
RACER Magazine   http://www.racer.com/speedtv
05/12/2008 - 11:32 AM
Istanbul, Turkey
 
Massa and Raikkonen fought a race-long duel with Hamilton in Turkey. (LAT Photo) ยป More Photos
Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali says that the challenge from McLaren in Turkey was extremely strong, and that the Italian team cannot afford to relax.

He also admitted that Kimi Raikkonen was fortunate to earn a third place after damaging his front wing at the first corner.

“Don’t forget that at the first corner we were quite lucky,” he said, “because when you have a touch like that, you can break a wing or may have a puncture as Kovalainen had, so I want to start from a positive point, that we were able to be sixth after the first corner instead of being much more behind. And of course the performance that we saw today of McLaren during the race was very good. And I always said that they are very strong, and I believe that.

“And I think that today I saw another standard that is completely different from the past, that McLaren in order to let’s say attack us changed the philosophy of the race, and changed the philosophy of qualifying, above all with Lewis. So I think this important, because also they have to react on the performance that we are doing. By the way, I think that as I have always said, the championship is very, very long and very tough and I’m expecting for them still to be very aggressive.”

Domenicali admitted a lot of though went into the choice of soft tires for the first stint, but conceded that the choice wasn’t quite right for the second stint.

“It’s a lot of things that have been taken
into consideration when you decide which kind of tires you want to start. Last year we did the same. We were the only ones to start with the soft tires, and it paid very well. We were happy about the soft performance during Friday and Saturday, that’s the reason why we had a new set and it’s always good to have [them] for the start, so these are the things that you normally consider when you have to take this decision.

“Afterwards it’s always easy to say yes or no but the reason why we chose to go with a second set of soft tires in the second stint was because basically Kimi did his fastest lap on the last lap on his soft tires, and it seemed that the tires were keeping the right pace with no problem. Then both of them were complaining about the second set of soft tires, and they didn’t have the tires that we were expecting. Now we need to understand and look at the data.”

Domenicali admitted he expects to face a tough challenge in Monaco.

“I think that Monte Carlo, as I said, will be very, very difficult, because I’m expecting the others – not only McLaren but BMW, Renault – to be there and be very aggressive. So we need to think very carefully how to approach the qualifying because that for sure will affect more the race more rather than at other tracks, so it’s two weeks of very hard work to try to see how we think we need to work, and also and how we think the others will attack us, above all in qualifying.”
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