British Grand Prix – 4th June 2008
Free practice – First session
Driver Pos. Time Laps Chassis
F. Massa 1st 1.19.575 8 267
K. Raikkonen 4th 1.19.948 16 270
Weather: air temperature 20 °C, track temperature 2 7/28
°C, cloudy.
Free Practice – Second session
Driver Pos. Time Laps Chassis
F. Massa 8th 1.20.943 18 267
K. Raikkonen 12th 1.21.275 31 270
Weather: air temperature 23/25 °C, track temperatur e
29/37 °C, partially cloudy.
A rather niggly Friday for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro. This
morning there was Felipe Massa’s accident, when he lost
control of the car under braking going into turn 7, because
of oil dropped on the racing line by Alonso’s car. It
ended with Massa’s car in the barriers and while fortunately
the driver was uninjured, the car suffered heavy damage. Thanks
to the work of the team, Felipe’s car was repaired and
the Brazilian managed to get out on track in the second session.
Kimi had no particular problems but, especially in the afternoon,
he was unable to get the car well balanced. “First and
foremost I want to praise our mechanics, who did an extraordinary
job in repairing Felipe’s car,” commented the
Team Principal of the Gestione Sportiva, Stefano Domenicali.
“Given the amount of damage and the short time available
they were really great. On the technical front, it was not
a totally satisfactory day. Of course, we lost some time with
Felipe, who despite everything said he was reasonably happy
with the handling of his car, while the same could not be
said for Kimi, especially in the second session. Now we must
study the data very carefully to be sure we make the right
choices for the rest of the weekend, keeping in mind the weather,
given that rain is forecast for the next two days.”
Kimi Raikkonen: “This morning things
were not so bad, while in the afternoon I had a bit of a struggle
to find the best settings on the car, which was not working
as well as it had done at last week’s test. We have
to look at the data to understand why. Obviously, the order
in the second session is not representative of the relative
strengths in the field. But I am still reasonably confident
and if we manage to find a good set-up, then we can fight
for the top places.”
Felipe Massa: “It was a big crash,
but that’s part of the game and I have had much worse
accidents in my career. I didn’t see any flags and I
had approached the corner in the usual way and then I totally
lost control of the car under braking. I tried to slow down,
but the impact was still pretty violent. The most important
thing is that we were able to fix the car and in the end we
didn’t lose that much time as it wasn’t planned
for me to do many laps in the morning. I want to thank all
the lads for the work they did: they were fantastic and they
didn’t stop for a moment right up to the very end of
the second session. We came to Silverstone with a good starting
point after the tests we did here last week and I think we
are going in the right direction. I am pleased with the balance
of the car and its performance on both types of tyre we have
here from Bridgestone.”
Luca Baldisserri: “We struggled a
bit today. This morning we had Felipe going off the track
which did serious damage to his car. Fortunately, thanks to
an exceptional job from the team, we managed to put the car
back together and get the driver out on track with an hour
remaining of the second session. Kimi was unable to find the
best set-up on his car, so we can expect a bit of work now
to be as well prepared as possible for tomorrow. From what
we saw today, and from the data we gathered last week, we
have a significant amount of information to study to be ready
for qualifying and for the race, while keeping in mind the
fact the weather could be bad.”
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