Formula One news

Ferrari boss mystified by McLaren pace

Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali admitted to being mystified after team drivers Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen were beaten into second and third places by McLaren's Lewis Hamilton in the Chinese Grand Prix. He said there was a lot to understand before going to the final round of the World Championship at Sao Paulo, Brazil, in two weeks time, with Massa seven points behind Hamilton.

"The thing that we need to understand, going to Brazil, is why and how this was possible, considering that in Singapore and in Fuji we were really fast, both in terms of quick laps and race pace," explained Domenicali. "For sure, this race was the worst, from the performance side, that have had this year in these conditions, together with Germany. The only point in common was that it was the same kind of tyres and we need to understand if that was the problem, but I don't think so. Sure, on the one hand, we were complaining that this weekend we didn't have enough grip to be competitive but also we didn't have the car handling in the first sector, above all."

"We cannot be in Brazil fighting - as we said at the beginning of the season - for the titles in the condition where our car is less competitive in these conditions, with such a big gap to our main competitors, to McLaren," he added.

Domenicali paid tribute to McLaren. "This weekend our main competitors were faster than us. They maybe did a better job, but in any case they were faster, for sure. We have seen that right from Friday they had better pace and better quick laps. We saw on Sunday that they were not doing something special. They were simply much faster than us and this is the reason why I have to say that if you consider what we could achieve in these conditions, we achieved the maximum.

"Honestly today Lewis was in another league, he was driving perfectly, fast, consistent and we couldn't even think of attacking him. In our briefing this morning we said that we had to try to attack Lewis, above all at the beginning of the race, to see how the situation was, but we really couldn't do so because he was too fast."

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