Formula One news
Todt braced for 'complicated' finale
07 August 2007Ferrari team principal Jean Todt remains optimistic for the World Championship after Kimi Raikkonen finished a close second to series leader Lewis Hamilton in Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix.
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"It's complicated," said Todt, "I'm always worried and of course, I would prefer to have both drivers 20 points ahead. Saying that, you know it makes a very intense and interesting challenge. If we are able to be on the podium with both drivers, both cars, for the six remaining Grands Prix of the season, which is possible, I still think that we have a chance to achieve what we want."
Raikkonen's second place and Felipe Massa's disappointing 13th was sealed in qualifying, said Todt. "In Q2, we at Ferrari are always on low fuel and during Felipe's attempt to qualify for Q3, he made a little mistake, understeering in the last sector and we realised that he would not be qualified for Q3. It's not something we have been much used to this year.
"So we changed his tyres and once the tyres were changed, we realised that no fuel had been put in the car so it was simply a mistake in the procedure. During the time it took to bring the car back to the garage, the tyres got cold, and probably pressure mounted on Felipe as well. It's easy to see now what we should have done: we should have put him on new tyres which would have been hot in the blankets, but we did not do the best job and we paid the cost of it.
"It was not good and I'm not happy about that but the same people have been winning a lot of races, a lot of championships and mistakes remain human, so that's it. We have to try to understand why we did not have a good procedure, to avoid that and hopefully make sure that it won't happen again.
"In the race it was very disappointing to see Felipe behind cars which again, I respect the cars, I respect the drivers but they are not in the same league at the moment and he could not pass them. Due to his starting position, we put the car full of fuel, having to guess, but it's never good in this business if you start to guess. It didn't work properly for him.
"For Kimi it was much better," continued Todt. "We had a competitive car but we did not do the best job for reasons we need to understand in qualifying and we paid the price. It's not pleasing but you have to accept it. I'm not very happy about the result today. You cannot always pretend that you're not happy if you don't win, even if what you always aim for is trying to win a race."
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