Fading Title Hopes Worry Ferrari at LinesMaker

Fading Title Hopes Worry Ferrari

Fer­rari fear their chances of fight­ing for the 2011 title will be over if Sebas­t­ian Vettel’s charge for Red Bull is not stopped soon.

Vet­tel won four out of the first five races and leads Fer­nando Alonso, Ferrari’s clos­est chal­lenger, by 67 points.

Team boss Ste­fano Domeni­cali said: “If Red Bull keep pro­gress­ing, then no doubt it (the title) will not be easy.

“They are very far ahead. We know it is dif­fi­cult, but we don’t give up.”

Vet­tel claimed his fourth vic­tory of the sea­son at the Span­ish Grand Prix despite increased pres­sure from his rivals at McLaren and Ferrari.

Alonso led the race for 18 laps after a sen­sa­tional move from fourth on the grid but he crossed the line in fifth because his Fer­rari could not match the pace of his rivals over the full race distance.

Alonso also suf­fered the ignominy of being lapped by the faster cars of Red Bull and McLaren while his team-mate Felipe Massa retired.

Domeni­cali has pointed to the next two grands prix, in Monaco on Sun­day and in Mon­treal two weeks later, as the acid test for Fer­rari to renew their challenge.

“We need to be very cau­tious and see where we are in the next cou­ple of grands prix because we will have much softer tyres and a dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tion of the track,” said the Fer­rari team principal.

“Then we will see where we are in terms of fight­ing for the title.

“We need to make sure we do the max­i­mum to recover. The nature of the peo­ple in Maranello has to be that they need to push and to work hard because we want to keep it alive as long as pos­si­ble, so we still believe.”

Ferrari’s attempt to close the gap in Barcelona was ham­pered when the sport’s gov­ern­ing body, the FIA, ruled that their new rear wing did not com­ply to the rulebook.

But Domeni­cali and Alonso also blamed the Ital­ian team’s dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mance on the car’s inabil­ity to get per­for­mance out of the harder tyres.

“We lost around two sec­onds per lap, which is really dif­fi­cult to explain,” added Domenicali.

“Unfor­tu­nately the tyres were unable to work on our cars which were slid­ing around because we could not get any tem­per­a­ture into them.

“Sun­day was the worst race we have had since the begin­ning of the sea­son in terms of race pace because before that we were quick, so it’s a shame.”

Alonso had to run two race stints on the hard tyres in Spain after sac­ri­fic­ing a set of soft tyres to qual­ify in fourth.

He added: “[We did] half the race on the hard tyres, which penalised us heav­ily and made the gap big­ger than it is in reality.

“But in the space of two weeks we have lost ground to Red Bull and McLaren, and we have to understand why.

“I am def­i­nitely not think­ing of giv­ing up on the cham­pi­onship after just five races.”

Tyres will again be a key issue around the twist­ing streets of Monte Carlo as, for the first time this sea­son, Pirelli are sup­ply­ing the super­soft tyres along with the soft tyres used at the first five races.

The super­softs should suit Monaco’s slower street cir­cuit but are not expected to last as long, which will again present the teams with strat­egy headaches.

Related Posts:

• But­ton Hopes to Match Red Bulls
• But­ton Hopes to Match Red Bulls
• Con­fi­dent Alonso Eyes Title Bid
• Costa Relin­quishes Role in Fer­rari Reshuffle
• Fer­rari: Massa Is Not Leaving

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