Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali said that ‘everything that could go wrong did go wrong’ for Ferrari in a chaotic Canadian Grand Prix that saw Fernando Alonso retire after a collision with Jenson Button and Felipe Massa struggle back to with place after an incident with Narain Karthikeyan.
“Regret is the feeling affecting all of us at the end of a chaotic Canadian Grand Prix,” said Domenicali. “Today we had the potential to fight for the win, but everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
“In the end, Felipe's sixth place is definitely a result that is hard to swallow given how the race ended. Two incidents in particular – the collision between Fernando and Button and the passing move on Karthikeyan that caused Felipe to go of the track – leave a bitter taste in the mouth.
“Now we must put this Sunday behind us, while retaining the fact that our performance level was a match for the situation, just as we had seen two weeks ago in Monaco.”
The normally mild-mannered Felipe Massa was clearly angry with Karthikeyan after the race – one that he feels he could have won. “I can't draw much satisfaction from this sixth place, given the potential we had here,” said the Brazilian. “My chances of finishing on the podium and also of fighting for the win given how things went, just evaporated when I was passing Karthikeyan. He was going very slowly on the dry line but then, as I was passing him on the wet, he accelerated and I lost control of the car ending up in the wall.
“Thanks to the next Safety Car, I was able to catch up to the pack and then, in the end, I passed a few cars to get as high as sixth. I am angry, there is no point denying it. We qualified well and we were in the top three up until the red flag. Then what happened happened and it was all over.”
Alonso was also left bemoaning his bad luck: “Everything went wrong, right from this morning when we saw it was raining,” said the Spaniard. “We had our best qualifying of the year and we found ourselves starting behind the safety car, when I felt that for me, the intermediates were the best tyre. When we fitted them, the downpour came, along with the red flag which meant those who had not changed tyres could now do it practically for nothing.
“Finally there was the coming together with Button, which as a final insult left my car beached on a kerb and I was unable to get going again. It's a real shame because today we really had a good race pace but we were unlucky: that's not a feeling I have, it's a fact.”
