Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene chose to look on the bright side after his drivers experienced two very different races in the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday.
Starting from second and third on the grid, Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel had hoped to convert the result into a double podium finish for Ferrari in front of its loyal fanbase, the Tifosi.
However, when Raikkonen’s anti-stall kicked in at the start and dropped him all the way to the back of the grid, such a result became hard to reach for the Italian marque.
Vettel kept his half of the bargain, surging to an excellent second place finish in his first race at Monza as a Ferrari driver. Raikkonen produced a masterclass in overtaking to fight his way back up to fifth place at the flag, but could not reach the podium.
“This time I see the glass half full,” Arrivabene said. “Sebastian’s race to second place was unbelievable. His contribution to the team so far has been outstanding.
“As for Kimi, he had a great qualifying yesterday, then maybe he messed up a bit at the start of the race. But afterwards he was able to pass a lot of cars on the track with a fantastic race. Ideally, we would have hoped for two good starts, but we’re happy anyway with this weekend.
“We came here investing a few tokens on our power unit and we’re satisfied with our gain, also in terms of reliability. In the forthcoming races, the gap to our main competitors will depend much on the kind of track.
“We will keep on working with humility and determination to the end of the season, trying to jump on every opportunity.”
Speaking after the race, Raikkonen admitted that he was unsure what caused him to have such a poor start, but he remained pleased with the pace of the SF15-T car.
“I don’t know exactly what happened at the start,” Raikkonen said. “As far as I know I did everything correctly, but the car went into the anti-stall and did not move at all. I still don’t have the right explanation about what happened, but it’s a really bad thing that cost us a lot today.
“Obviously I’m a bit disappointed, as we were hoping for a better result in our home race in front of all our fans, but if we think that after the first hundred meters we were last it was still a good result.
“Overall we had a pretty good speed all weekend so in a way we have to be happy for what we have done because here we were expecting more difficulties.
“Today I was positively surprised that we could get through some cars that are very fast on the straights, this shows that we are doing the right things, pushing the car in the right direction and improving in all areas.”
