Ferrari has to find some speed, says Domenicali

Fernando Alonso may have clawed back some of Sebastian Vettel’s advantage by finishing third at Silverstone, but Ferrari is under no illusions about the lack of performance its car is currently producing.

Stefano Domenicali says that the team has to use the short break before Nurburgring to find a bit more speed.

“For me this weekend in terms of performance was not really good,” said Domenicali. “We need to understand in these two or three days at home why, because there is something I would say bigger than little details that caused us not to be as we normally are here in Silverstone, better in terms of pace, and better at qualifying, everything.

“So this is the most important thing that we have to do at home, understand and recover the performance, because we don’t have to underestimate that today it was very good in terms of driver classification, because we recovered in one second 15 points, and this is the objective that we have to have before the summer break, to close the gap as much as possible.

“But we have seen that not only Red Bull now is strong, Mercedes is very strong, they have solved their issue in terms of degradation. So now if you want to in the championship, and this is the objective we have, we need to improve the car, and that’s the only thing that we have to do.”

Domenicali praised Felipe Massa for his recovery drive: “I’m pleased for the race of Felipe, because it was something that was needed for him, for his head, for the team, for the pressure that he is under, and I think that he drove very, very well today. Without the problem at the beginning with the tyres he would have been on the podium for sure.”

Domenicali confirmed that the team changed its strategy in an attempt to conserve the tyres, opting for more stops.

“We tried to act, as a team, to protect our situation. We put more pressure in the tyres to try to avoid punctures, and kept the stints short, that’s why we moved to a different strategy, in order to prevent any possible damages to our tyres. Also because we had the one at the beginning with Felipe. So that’s what we decided.”