Stefano Domenicali: “This was the worst race we’ve had…”

Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali admits that Ferrari was simply not on the pace in Spain today, but says that it’s too early to write off the team’s title challenge.

Ferrari has until now showed good race pace, and he’s hoping that the move to the supersoft tyres over the next two races will help to give the team a boost.

“We need to be very cautious,” said Domenicali. “We have seen so many different things happening in the first couple of races since the beginning that it’s difficult to make a judgement at the moment. For sure what we have seen today was expected, where here unfortunately in the condition where the car needs to have the maximum downforce – and we know we don’t have it – we had a multiplied effect on the tyres, above all on the hard, because we were not able to let them work.

“If you think that Fernando was leading for 20 laps more or less, in 46 laps [after that] we were lapped, so we were losing about 3 seconds a lap. So you can understand that it was really difficult to explain from a pure performance point of view.”

Domenicali said that Ferrari simply couldn’t get the hard tyres to work.

“Unfortunately with this kind of condition, with this kind of cars, these tyres were not able to work on our cars. The cars were sliding around, and you’re not putting in temperature. Three seconds is a lot, as you can imagine.

“I have to say this was the worst race we’ve had since the beginning in terms of race pace. Because the last couple of races we were pretty quick, and for sure it’s a shame. But we have seen that things are so changeable. For sure the tyre effect has a big influence.

“We will need to see where we will be the next couple of Grands Prix, because we will have a much softer tyre, and a different configuration of track, and then we will see where we are. Of course fighting for the championship, we know that it is difficult, but we don’t give up.”