Raikkonen likely to get new engine

The champion was due to keep his French Grand Prix engine for the forthcoming British race, but Ferrari are now likely to make the change as a precaution following the exhaust problem that struck Raikkonen's car halfway through the Magny-Cours event.

Raikkonen was leading the race when part of his exhaust system worked loose, forcing him to slow his pace, although he still came home in second behind teammate Felipe Massa.

"I would say it is quite likely," said Domenicali when asked if Ferrari would change the engine. "For sure, after such a heavy race from the middle to the end, it's very likely that we have to change it so we need to play the joker that allows us to do it.

"As I said, we will do the analysis later on and tomorrow but there's no rush to do anything more than eventually change it when we go to Silverstone."

Domenicali said Ferrari made a conscious decision to leave the errant component flapping on the side of Raikkonen's car as they feared they would lose more time removing it during his pitstop. The exhaust part eventually flew off by itself.

"It was already flying away," he said. "There was the cable of the lambda and we decided not to cut that because we would maybe lose more seconds, and we had (Jarno) Trulli pushing behind so we took that into consideration. I have to say that in terms of strategy, in terms of teamwork everything was done correctly."

He said Ferrari had made as many adjustments as possible to conserve the engine, but they could never be completely confident that Raikkonen would reach the end of the race.

"We were trying to do what we could in order to protect the engine under those conditions and after all the things that were possible to do, just wait until the chequered flag," Domenicali said. "You could see that there were a lot of switches being moved around.

"For sure we were very worried, no doubt, it was a long race to finish, maybe lost a lot of years and a lot of hair but that's part of the game. In that condition you never know. It may stop any lap, it's too difficult, it's critical."

He was unable to confirm why the exhaust had begun to come apart, and admitted that it might prove difficult to investigate.

"Unfortunately it was not possible to understand it and also the other difficulty is that we had almost half of the race with all the breaking parts falling apart so it will also be difficult to have the pieces in our hands because they're somewhere around the track," Domenicali said.

"We will try to do the analysis after this weekend but at the moment there's no other info."