Raikkonen sat in the garage on Saturday as the first qualifying session counted down, trusting his time to be good enough to progress. But Timo Glock dropped the Finn into 16th place and, with no time left to return to the track, Raikkonen's day was over.
"We made a stupid mistake," said Raikkonen, who stayed in to save his tires. "There's no point in saying whose fault it was because we can't do anything about it now."
It wouldn't have been so bad if Ferrari had been off the pace and if it wasn't the second time it had happened this year.
Teammate Felipe Massa qualified fourth -- Ferrari's highest grid position of the season -- to compensate, but it still felt like an opportunity had been missed.
"I don't know what happened. But for sure it's not very good to have one car there and another not," said Massa, who blasted the Italian team's arrogance after it happened at Malaysia. "You're worried, for sure. It's not a good thing for us."
Ferrari reorganized the team following the Malaysia error, replacing its team manager.
In Barcelona, aerodynamic upgrades gave Ferrari a big boost after it picked up just three points from the first four races.
Championship leader Jenson Button took the pole position. Brawn GP teammate Rubens Barrichello is third, one place behind Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel.
The long straight into the first corner could throw up some surprises as Massa looks for his first points a season after challenging for the championship.
"Overtaking three cars like this is not so easy. I'm very happy to have the KERS for the start tomorrow in a reasonably good position," the Brazilian said about the overtaking technology. "It won't be easy but let's see how good we start compared to the others."
With Ferrari finally catching up to leading teams Brawn, Red Bull and Toyota, Massa believes further upgrades for the coming races will improve the team's chances, even if his championship hopes are already slight.
"It shows we can improve even more. Now, we're in the right direction. Maybe it's too late but we will not lose our motivation," Massa said. "And this is very good for myself, so I don't race just to race but I race to fight for the victory."
Renault's Fernando Alonso wasn't impressed by Ferrari's performance, saying its cars still trailed the leaders.
"Even if Ferrari has zero points, I think the performance of the car was not as bad as the results, so to see them fourth or fifth is not a big surprise," the two-time world champion said. "They made the first step but they need to make more steps."
Ferrari expected Raikkonen to be in the hunt for points.
"We had the potential to get both cars into the top three rows and we only got it half right," team principal Stefano Domenicali said.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Click
No comments:
Post a Comment