Ferrari Team Principal Maurizio Arrivabene has acknowledged that Williams were stronger than the Maranello outfit at the British Grand Prix.
Speaking after the race he said that Ferrari can not be happy with their performance of the weekend and that the team needs to stay humble about Sebastian Vettel’s 3rd place finish.
“Overall I can’t be happy with this weekend: on an all-dry race, the result would have been much different,” commented Arrivabene after the race.
“I feel happy because once again Seb made the perfect call to come into the pits, and then drove superbly to open the gap to the Williams cars,” he continued.
“Also, I am pleased with a very good race strategy. We need to stay humble and not brag ourselves, because today third place came courtesy of a great drive by Seb and a great strategy-but we also need a great car.
“In the case of Kimi, whose strategy was identical to Seb’s, he thought it better to come in. If it had rained harder, maybe he could have won the race. But we must be honest and acknowledge that Williams was stronger than us today”.
Kimi Raikkonen was poised to finish higher up the points but he chose to pit for intermediate tyres too early, which meant he lapped much slower than the other cars for a few laps before the rain started falling. In the dry he was happy with the balance of the car but bemoaned the lack of straight line speed when he was stuck behind Nico Hulkenberg’s Force India.
“In the early part of the race we were stuck behind Hulkenberg’s Force India, they were too fast on the straight and in the places you could pass, while we lacked some speed,” said Raikkonen after the race.
He went on to say:”It’s a pity because the handling of the car was good through the whole race and the behavior was definitely better than yesterday.
“When it started raining heavily, the track became very slippery, especially in Turns 7 and 8; so I took the decision to come in the pits for Intermediate, but then the rain stopped. Probably I made the call three or four laps too early. But in general, this kind of track is not ideal for us, and this is something we have to work on.”
Vettel, although happy with the podium finish, admitted that the rain helped him on the way to his podium finish which he felt the team deserved.
“It was not easy to take the right decision with the weather,” said Vettel
“But we did a great call to pit just in the perfect lap, made up a lot of ground and finished on the podium.
“I’m sorry for the people that got wet, but the rain helped us today! It was in the end a podium finish that we deserved, as we made the right call at the right time.”
He is concerned with Williams step in performance over the weekend and says that the team has lots to learn and understand.
Photo credit: Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1
