Formula One news

Ferrari celebrates perfect comeback

Ferrari took its sixth win of the season today, the third for Felipe Massa. It brings Ferrari's race win total to 198 from 753 Grands Prix. Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen took their second one-two finish as Ferrari drivers, while it was the 74th in the history of the Scuderia.

"Sixth victory of the year and the second one-two after the one in Magny-Cours," said team boss Jean Todt. "This was a dream race and a dream result which should make us all happy; drivers, team and fans. I want to thank all our commercial and technical partners, especially Shell. As we had expected, it was a very tough and closely contested race right from the start. In this job, you must never give up because things can change very quickly and today that change worked in our favour. In less than two weeks, we will be on track in Monza for our home race. The effort we will put in will be the same because we will be after an identical result to this one, while remaining aware of the difficulty of the task and the competitiveness of our closest rivals."

Felipe Massa commented, "This is becoming a special place for me! It is a really great win! I maintained my concentration for the whole race, trying to control the situation. Only towards the end of the second stint did I make a small mistake at Turn 7 which cost me the gap I had over Kimi, who closed right up to me. I made a very good start and the car behaved perfectly even though it has to be said it was a difficult race. Today's result is a great encouragement when looking to the final part of the season. It is fantastic to head to Monza after a weekend like this. We must continue to work in this same way and give it our best shot."

Kimi Raikkonen added, "Of course I would like to have won but probably the race was decided in yesterday afternoon's qualifying session. When your main rival is your team-mate, there are less unknown factors and even less room to come up with something. However, the important thing is to have put two Ferraris in front of everyone else and, in any case, we have made up ground on the championship leader. I got a good start then I had a bit of understeer which went away after a few laps. The second set of tyres did not work as well as the first. The quick lap at the end? I was a bit bored with spending the whole race behind another car and so I tried to see how quick I could have been. In Monza I will have to try and do a good qualifying to be in the best possible situation for the race."

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