Scuderia Ferrari: "We need to work harder"

While Qualifying had gone well for Vettel and bad for Raikkonen, the race was the opposite. By Jerrica Leong

The Scuderia Ferrari team had revised their aero package going into the Spanish Grand Prix and while both Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen ran the new aero kit during Friday practice though only Vettel had raced with the new package on Saturday and Sunday.

Sure enough, probably thanks to the new aero package setup, Sebastian Vettel had wowed the crowd when he split the two Mercedes drivers at the start the race. While Vettel had not manage to shake off Hamilton much of the race, Hamilton was heard telling his race engineer that Vettel was impossible to catch. Vettel had remained in second place throughout the race until the wrong strategy decision had seen Hamilton gain a position during the second rounds of pitstops. So Vettel had come home third behind the silver cars of Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.

Kimi Raikkonen had not been able to clock in a fast enough time during qualifying which saw him settle for P7 behind both the Toro Rossos of Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen and the Williams of Valtteri Botas. But Raikkonen, like Vettel, had had a brilliant start, he dived down the outside of both Toro Rossos and a fast starting Felipe Massa to end up behind Bottas who had tried to snatch third place from Hamilton.

Raikkonen went on a different strategy from all the rest of the front runners opting for the harder compound tyres during his second stint. Much to everybody’s surprise, Raikkonen was matching the leaders in lap times despite being on the “slower tyres”. After a long second stint, Raikkonen had returned to the track on the medium tyres, he chased down Valtteri Bottas to the ending stages of the race.

Unfortunately for Raikkonen, his tyres had given way when he started to breathe down Bottas’ neck and with only four laps left, Raikkonen did not manage to find a way pass a unusually nervous Bottas. So the battle of the Flying Finns had ended with Bottas taking fourth and Raikkonen coming in fifth.

Having both drivers run on different aero setups, team principle Maurizio Arrivabene states that the team has seen improvements on Vettel’s car although they were still half a second off the pace the silver arrows were setting in T3 only. Arrivabene also said that even if the team had made Vettel go for a three stopper the results will still be the same. The team will have to work harder as the reality of things shows that they are just not good enough at the moment.

Good luck to Ferrari in Monaco GP happening two weeks from now. Hopefully they will see the “jump” they were expecting in Spain.