Q & A with Stefano Domenicali

Stefano Domenicali: As I've always said, since the beginning, I was expecting a tough championship this year, with BMW that had already shown, during testing, that it was better than last year, for sure.

I always said that and that confirms what I always thought since the beginning: that it would be a very long championship, very long, it is a classification than is closer to soccer than an F1 season, and we are three teams covered by two points.

That shows that we cannot lose an important step because the others can take more important points, so it will be important to keep up the pace of reliability.

But we don't have to forget that we have to keep on developing our car to the maximum, because the others will not sleep, they will be back again very strong in Spain and I'm expecting McLaren to be back again and up to standard in Barcelona, so what we have to do is work very hard and keep the feet on the ground, concentrate and that's the way we used to do: reply on the track.

Q. The timing of the first stop looked as though Kimi was going to go longer than Felipe but it was the other way round, was there any particular problem there?

SD: No, we had a little problem with the traffic light with Kimi.

Q. Right now, who is the hardest competitor in your mind?

SD: Right now I have to say that we expect both McLaren and BMW because we don't have to over-react to anything. As always, from the pragmatic point of view, we need to consider the points. The points show that BMW is in front of us in the constructors' championship, and in the drivers' championship they are behind Kimi so they are all there, but I am expecting McLaren to be back again on the pace very soon.

Q. After Felipe's mistakes in Australia and Malaysia, how important is it to have a good result here?

SD: I think that it was important for him, for sure, but it was important for the team to have this 18-point race, because we saw that since Friday our car was really good, and it's a shame when you have a car that is good not to score 18 points. It would be nice to see both drivers on the first step of the podium but that's impossible so I think from the team's point of view, it was really a great response. That's teamwork.

Q. Was Felipe feeling the pressure this weekend?

SD: It's normal when you don't have any points that you feel frustrated, because you want to show what is your performance, your standard. But what we said is really... we need to stay cool and calm.

If we work well, we have this, this is the response and of course it's a daily job in order to keep the team together always: drivers, mechanics, teams and we win together, we lose together so that's the way we have always been working.

And this is really also the response to the fact that we are celebrating here the 100th victory since our president Montzemolo became president of Ferrari so it's a special event for all of us and I think it's important because he's always with us and celebrating this with a one-two is very important.

Q. Will you be bringing a lot of new parts to the Barcelona race?

SD: We don't have to lose concentration, we need to keep up the pace in terms of reliability and performance, that's the reason why we want to bring something new to every race, even if it's small it's important, because I'm not expecting the others to sleep.

I'm pretty sure they are flat out, trying to do what they can, because the championship is open. We are still in only the first part, only the fourth race next in the Spain so it's very very long.