Sports / Motor Racing |
Ferrari to concentrate on reliability after Spain(Reuters)Updated: 2007-05-15 09:35
Ferrari are to focus on improving their reliability after losing ground to McLaren in the Formula One constructors' battle at Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix, despite claiming individual honours in the race. Brazilian Felipe Massa celebrated his second victory in a row, after securing Ferrari's sixth successive pole position and setting the fastest lap. The Italian team have now won three of this season's four races, yet the gap between them and their Mercedes-powered rivals increased to nine points from five after Finland's Kimi Raikkonen retired after 11 laps with an alternator problem. The Ferrari driver was third at the time. That was the team's first retirement of the year but a gearbox problem in qualifying for the season-opening Australian race, won by Raikkonen on his Ferrari debut, left Massa fighting from the back of the grid to sixth place. Technical director Mario Almondo told reporters at the Circuit de Catalunya that the reliability problem was now the main concern. "I think that our level of performance, particularly in terms of pace and during the race, is very, very good. We are satisfied about that," he said. "We are of course much less satisfied about the level of reliability that we have had up to now and we have to concentrate on that. "If I had to give you the numbers, 51 percent we have to concentrate on reliability and the other 49 is improving performance," he said. INDISPENSIBLE INGREDIENTS Team boss Jean Todt agreed. "We know that one of the indispensable ingredients for winning the championship is reliability and twice now it has been missing this season," the Frenchman said. "We are back to a following role in both classifications because of the great competitiveness of our main rivals." Apart from double champion Fernando Alonso's fifth place in Bahrain last month, McLaren have had both their drivers on the podium in every race. The team with the youngest line-up in Formula One also has its drivers in the top two places, with 22-year-old British rookie Lewis Hamilton becoming the youngest championship leader on Sunday. Hamilton, with a third place and three seconds, leads Spaniard Alonso by two points with Massa one further back and Raikkonen eight behind the Briton. "I have lost precious points, but there are still 13 races to recover," said Raikkonen, whose title hopes were thwarted by reliability problems in 2005 when he was at McLaren and Alonso was at Renault. McLaren won more races than anyone that year, 10 to Renault's eight, but failed to win either championship. Ferrari also won more races (nine) than any team in 2006 but lost out to Renault (eight wins).
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