DOMENICALI INTERVIEW April 6, 2009: Errors Must Stop

Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali says the Italian squad's errors in the last race in Malaysia are unacceptable and that the situation must be rectified immediately. (as my daughter would say: duh!)

Ferrari has endured its worst start to a season since 1992, when the team also failed to score points in the first two races of the season.

The Sepang weekend was filled with costly errors, like Felipe Massa missing the cut to go into Q2 on Saturday because of a misjudgement, or an early gamble to change Kimi Raikkonen's tyres in the race.

Domenicali admitted the situation is unacceptable and says everyone at the team has to accept responsibility for their errors.

"Well, of course it is not a positive weekend," Domenicali told reporters. "It is the second one in a row and it is not good, for sure. Anyway, what we have to do is react immediately.

"The people have to take their own responsibility for things, and this is important in the moment where either from the performance point of view, and the management point of view, things are not going well. This is for sure not acceptable, and I am not accepting that.

"So what we have to do now on one side is to work very hard to try to anticipate as much as we can, all of the development on the car. Then on the other side, on the track, we want to make sure that people with certain responsibilities are taking the right decisions in the right way, because of course this is something that we cannot accept for the future."

The Italian made it clear, however, that the team must not only avoid more errors, but also work hard to make sure the F60 car is competitive enough to fight in front.

"We have to consider two things. On the performance point of view, we have to make sure that we are able to bring back in China something straight away. That should be the case already for Shanghai," he added.

"We know, from what we have seen, that it is on the aero side where we have to make a difference. So, it is just an aerodynamic development that is really needed. We need to have more downforce. This is the most critical point of the car that we have seen now.

"So, this is the most important thing that we have to do at home. We have to work day and night, to try to anticipate all that we can to improve the performance of the car.

"Then the other thing on the performance - we need to see why on one side, our car for example on Friday, with lots of fuel, was very, very competitive on the soft tyres the more we were running. And yet with other tyres, it is very difficult.

"So, there is a car that is very, very sensitive to the different fuel loads and to the typology of the tyres.

"From the management point of view, of course we have to do an improvement – because it is something that we cannot accept any more for the future."