Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali remains optimistic despite a nightmare weekend at Silverstone as Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa finished 14th and 15th.
Both men suffered punctures from collisions and Alonso received a drive through penalty for gaining an advantage when he passed Robert Kubica, but it was magnified when he was forced to wait to take it until after a safety car period had bunched up the field.
“The situation was Fernando was attacking Robert, because he had potentially much more speed in the car,” said Domenicali. “He tried to be aggressive and overtake, and we complain that the drivers are not aggressive and complain about the lack of overtaking. We spoke to race control on the radio to check the position.
“As soon as we received the information that let’s say, in the opinion of the stewards Fernando should hand back the position to Robert, he was already very far behind, and Robert was really slowing down, because he had a problem.”
While getting a penalty when the car overtaken had retired may seem a little strange, the stewards clearly also considered the time Alonso gained relative to other cars he was racing, although Ferrari is not convinced by that argument: “It’s a matter of gaining an advantage or not, and compared to whom, because that’s the point of discussion.”
The bottom line is that the penalty proved to be a lot more damaging than even the FIA had suspected.
“For sure we feel that it’s very harsh. It’s strange that these things appear when everything is going in the wrong direction. At this moment we have to stay cool, we have to react with the facts and it is positive to see that the cars have done a good step in performance.
“I’m sure that after these bad moments the luck will come back, and maybe we’ll move toward the others. We just need to believe in ourselves, we believe in the people that work in Maranello, we believe in our drivers. As I said, better times will come.
“We are really on the right side because we are going up with the performance of the car, so this is the best sign that we can take from this weekend, because really it was very bad for us today. The sun of a very good result is there in the middle of the clouds, this period of a difficult situation and also very unlucky scenarios will pass, I’m sure. We just need to stay strong and try not to be too emotional.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Wise words indeed from Mr Domenicali. Of course Ferrari will have better days, even if as I suspect their cars remain third best.
To me it looked like a revenge for what Ferrari said at Valencia.
I think even the stewards must have felt a little sheepish when the safety car came out and they realised that the penalty would be hugely magnified! Honestly it was just one of those things.
This is the response of FIA – “Ferrari, mind you language, or you’ll get more than 20 seconds next time”. I don’t think FIA could compromise the organization more than that, but the sport looks completely out of control since 2008. There were scandals, wrong rules, wrong decisions, wrong judgments, new safety car rules every race (WTF?) and FIA reacts like a god – the only authority in the world that can do whatever they want. It is absolutely pity, but WRC, F2/F3, GP2 and WTCC are much more intriguing these days. Not to mention the ultimately boring design of the tracks – sorry, the overtakes are the salt of the sport, just like the goals in the football – I didn’t come here just to look at the new front wing of Kubica, or the modified diffuser of Red Bull. Both Vetel and Fernando were quick enough, but with no option to overtake – what the hell are you expecting to see ? Personally I started losing the hot spot with F1, I was at Rally Bulgaria this week, and it was absolutely much more fun than looking at FIA ruining the pinnacle of the motorsport.
“The bottom line is that the penalty proved to be a lot more damaging than even the FIA had suspected.”.
Sorry, but I really believe that the FIA happily confirmed that their penalty proved to be as damaging as they expected.
Shame on them.
Sorry but when they gave the penalty even Paul the psychic octopus didn’t know the safety car was coming and would bunch up the field and make a drive through far more costly!
The fact that they penalised that action with a drive-through is the best indication that they expected to cause as much damage to FA/Ferrari as possible. With or without SC.
Same penalty as the one for overtaking a SC? Come on, this is a very bad joke. Maybe it would be better for the F1 to nominate Paul the octopus as FIA Steward. He would be much more precise with the judgements.
FIA is seriously damaging the sport now, if Ferrari fails to perform the next 2 races, they’re out of the season and they’ll back out on the development of the car, and once Ferrari goes out of F1, the sport losses the charm…
It’s a difficult situation but I think that next time Ferrari should do the right thing from the off and let the other driver back past. If they’d done that then there would have been no penalty and Alonso would have been past Kubica in a couple of laps anyway. Instead they ended up losing a lot of points!