RAIKKONEN/MASSA Confident Of Ferrari's Reliability (Spoiler-Post Race Interviews)

(from autosport)

MASSA' QUOTE:


Felipe Massa is confident that Ferrari have nothing to fear about the high temperatures that will greet them in Sepang this weekend, despite the double engine failure in Australia.

The Brazilian and teammate Kimi Raikkonen endured a troubled weekend in Melbourne, and both retired from the race with engine failures - which some suggested could have been caused by the higher than usual temperatures.

But Massa is optimistic that there will be no repeat of the dramas this weekend, and that Ferrari can kick-start their campaign in Malaysia.

"We will put new engines in the car and for sure we can go to the end of two races now," he said. "It wasn't the temperature that affected our engines, it was something else which we need to discover very quickly.

"We need to start a new championship from Malaysia. The championship is long, we know points are very important but we know also that many things can happen in every race."

Ferrari were set to fly the Australian power units back to their Maranello base for a series of evaluations to work out exactly what went wrong, in a bid to find solutions for Malaysia.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RAIKKONEN'S QUOTE:


Kimi Raikkonen is convinced his Ferrari team will be able to solve the reliability problems that hindered their Australian Grand Prix weekend.

The world champion was hit by trouble in qualifying, meaning he had to start from 15th place, and then retired from the race with an engine problem.

Raikkonen still managed to score a point for eighth place, but that was the only positive the Italian squad could extract from a disappointing weekend.

And although Raikkonen admits the reliability issues are a concern, he is sure Ferrari will work hard to solve them.

"The lack of reliability is a real problem for me now," the Finn said. "But I know that back in Maranello the team is working hard to solve our problems.

"I'm not worried at all about the performance and the competitiveness of the car. The first race was like it was, but we know that we have a really good car.

"We have to be constantly competitive during the weekend, because when you have to start from far behind, you get stuck in the traffic, just the way it happened at Melbourne.

"We had a good start, but it is difficult to overtake; you need to take some risks, especially when you have slower cars in front of you."

Raikkonen, who last year won the title by one point, welcomed the result after such a poor weekend, as he reckons that point could be crucial in the end.

"There's really not much to say about the first race weekend of the season: The only positive thing is, that it's all behind us," said Raikkonen.

"We had problems right from Saturday morning and we could not operate according to our plans. Obviously we are really disappointed.

"There's no point in knowing what we could have done on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, because in the end we would not have finished the race. We don't cry over spilled milk.

"It doesn't help anyway and would not change the result. Although, with all the problems we had, we still managed to get one point.

"So in the end one can always find a positive aspect in this Australian weekend. We'll see how important that single point will be by the end of the season."

 

Consider that when Domenicali realized that neither driver could improve their position with the limited laps remaining, and that Rubens would likely be disqualified, that the cars were just pulled over to save the engines?