Ferrari calls for SC rules rethink

Domenicali said he was left 'angry' by the situation in Valencia - when Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa lost valuable time stuck behind a safety car, while seeing title rival Lewis Hamilton effectively escape without punishment for overtaking it

Although he moved to play down talk of Ferrari viewing the events as a 'scandal', suggesting that a statement on the team's website was merely expressing the view of fans, he was adamant that the safety car regulations needed a better look at.

His biggest disappointment was the delay it took to punish Hamilton for overtaking the safety car, which had allowed him to build up enough of a lead over Kamui Kobayashi to take a drive-through penalty without losing a position.

"Of course we are very angry because we didn't get the points that we should have got from this race - considering our performance," said Domenicali.

"If I have an analysis of this weekend from a technical point of view then we made a step forward, not enough for sure to catch mainly the Red Bull, but it was in the right direction.

"We saw the first lap of the race that the situation was progressing in the right direction, so on that at least we did the right step. But if you look at the classification of tonight, we had less points than the most difficult race we had this year. So it is very frustrating.

"On the sporting side, for me - I think we were on one side extremely unlucky. If you look, the only four cars that were on the main straight when the safety car was deployed were [Sebastian] Vettel, Hamilton, Fernando and Felipe.

"Sebastian was able to be in front of the safety car, Hamilton was basically not respecting the yellow light on the safety car, and then we had one complete lap with our two cars behind the safety car and, in the meantime, starting from Button onwards, all the others were coming in.

"The frustration is something related to the fact that I know that certain decisions, before they are taken, are right and not wrong. But when the situation is that if you take a decision and that decision, it has an affect on the end classification, but because of the delay it doesn't happen, this is something we need to consider."

Domenicali also questioned why drivers were only given minor five-second penalties for breaking the safety car delta time rules.

"By doing this kind of precedent then what is happening is in the future, you might sometimes prefer to break the rule and have this kind of penalty and not respect the rules. This is not correct in my view."

Domenicali said that Ferrari had spoken to the FIA after the race to clarify what happened, as it seeks improvements in the way such matters are dealt with in the future.

"We have already taken up this matter with the FIA," said Domenicali. "The result is closed and it is finished, for the future we have to make sure that the things we have been discussing will not happen again."

Domenicali said that comments from Alonso that the FIA had 'manipulated' the result of the race were made in the heat of the moment.

"Well, I think we have to consider [him being] in a hot moment," he explained. "For sure Fernando was the man that was ruined by the situation. Our race was hurt by a situation that was not under our control. That is what I can say."