Monday 6th April 2009
Felipe Massa hit the nail on the head when he labelled Ferrari's efforts in Malaysia as nothing but "stupid" after the Scuderia cost themselves any chance of scoring points.
Ferrari looked set for a good weekend ahead after dominated Friday's second practice session when Kimi Raikkonen led home Massa for a 1-2 result. But from there their weekend went downhill.
Massa's chances of a solid points-finish were undone by a silly mistake in qualifying when his team failed to send him out again in Q1, believing his earlier time to be sufficient to make it through. As such they could do little but watch as the Brazilian dropped down the timesheets, eventually qualifying in 16th place.
Sunday's race then proved to be Raikkonen's turn to watch any chance he had of scoring points come undone as Ferrari made the incorrect tyre choice, sending the Finn out on full wets while others were still using the softer option dry tyres. The result was that Raikkonen was lapping over 20s a lap slower than the rest of the pack and could only watch as he chances of scoring points evaporated.
It proved to be a dismal weekend for the Scuderia - their second without points - and one that is likely to see a few incriminations and apologies being made come Monday morning. And while team boss Stefano Domenicali has already conceded that Ferrari's performance was unacceptable, Massa has now added his thoughts.
"We need to start from zero," said the 2008 runner-up. "We need to get together to understand point by point what is going wrong. And, try to improve everything. That is the idea. I think we need to get together and we need to improve.
"We were not great before and stupid now.
"For sure the car is not strong enough. We need to work on that, and we did some mistakes on the strategy and this kind of thing. It is always a problem when you don't score points. So, for sure in this kind of race our aim is to score points, but it was not possible. Anyway, it is a bad result."
But it's not just strategy that is letting Ferrari down as Massa admits the F60 is lacking compared to last year's car and as such it will take even longer for the Scuderia to get up to speed.
"Last year we had a better car so it was better to improve the situation quickly and get in the fight again," he said. "This year our car is not so good, so it will be a bit more difficult to improve - but things change from one race to the next so maybe we still have a chance."
Source : Planet F1
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