Q & A with Stefano Domenicali

Stefano Domenicali: Well, I don't think it's correct to say that we are dominating because if you look at the championship, the situation is very close. It was important for us to react after the first Grand Prix in Australia, with only one point scored at the end, but once again, it's not dominating. Today's race shows that our competitors are very very close.

Q. It seems that Kimi and Felipe are head to head in the battle for the championship; what strategy do you think will be needed for the future?

SD: At the moment, as we always said, our strategy is to keep them free, because they have to race with no tactics in that respect. The most important thing is the team's interests and this is the key point for us. At the moment there are no changes in our procedure but we will see later on during the season.

Q. Next race Monte Carlo; last year McLaren was very strong, a little bit faster than Ferrari, what are you expecting from this race?

SD: I think the next two races, Monte Carlo and also Canada we need to react because last year was very difficult for us. We have prepared the race with a different approach, we will also see next week in Paul Ricard where we have some tests to see if what we have prepared is going in the right way.

And by the way I think that not only McLaren will be strong, I am expecting Renault, BMW of course to be strong again, above all on the track where qualifying can be different, you can be aggressive but then even if you are longer at that circuit, everything will be different, so I think Monte Carlo will be a very important race for everyone.

Q. Felipe had the edge on Kimi, how much did problems Kimi had on Friday affect his whole weekend?

SD: Well, of course, when you are not able to prepare the way that you wanted, the car is always... maybe I would have tried something different but in all respects, today's race was different. Don't forget that at the first corner we were quite lucky, because when you make a pass like that, you can break a wing or may have a puncture as Kovalainen had, so I want to start from a positive point, that we were able to be sixth after the first corner instead of being much further back.

Of course the performance that we saw today of McLaren during the race was very good. I always said that they are very strong and I believe that and I think that today I saw another standard that is completely different from the past, that McLaren in order to attack us changed the philosophy of the race and changed the philosophy of qualifying, above all with Lewis, so I think this important, because they also have to react on the performance that we are doing. By the way, I think that as I have always said, the championship is very very long, it's always tough and I'm expecting for them still to be very aggressive.

Q. Seeing how the race turned out today, are you happy with the tyre strategy you chose?

SD: Afterwards it's always easy to say yes or no but the reason why we chose to go with a second set of soft tyres in the second stint because basically Kimi did his fastest lap on the last lap on soft tyres and it seemed that the tyres were keeping the right pace with no problem.

Then both of them were complaining about the second set of soft tyres and they didn't have the tyres that we were expecting. Now we need to understand and look at the data to see if it's... after, of course, and if and when with the set-up it would have been better to have a different set. That's racing.

Q. Monte Carlo is a race where qualifying is very important; how do you see the qualifying performance of Ferrari there?

SD: I think that Monte Carlo, as I said, will be very very difficult, because I'm expecting the others - not only McLaren but BMW, Renault, to be there and be very aggressive. So we need to think very carefully how to approach the qualifying because that, for sure, will affect the race more rather than at other tracks, so it's two weeks of very hard work to try to see how we think we need to work and also and how we think the others will go into attack us, above all in qualifying.

Q. Was the choice of putting the softs on at the start determined by the performance away from the grid?

SD: It's a lot of things that have been taken into consideration, when you decide which kind of tyres you want to start. Last year we did the same. We were the only ones to start with the soft tyres and it paid off very well. We were happy about the soft performance during Friday and Saturday, that's the reason why we had a new set and it's always good to have for the start, so these are the things that you normally consider when you have to take this decision.

Q. At what stage of the race were you comfortable that Lewis was actually on a three stop?

SD: Well, basically after the pit stop we were already almost pretty sure about that, that was the reason why we said to Felipe, of course to be cautious when he was attacked by Lewis because we were aware that he was much lighter at that time.

Q. Ross Brawn said yesterday that he was surprised that Kimi Raikkonen has not been much quicker than Felipe this season, it seems that Felipe has taken a step forward. Have you noticed improvements from Felipe in approach and dedication this season?

SD: He's always a great professional driver, he's always fully dedicated to the team, to his work, to the team, and we always said we are very happy about our two drivers. It's not a way of protecting him when there are difficult situations, it's because we feel that the potential of these two drivers in the team is perfect. They are very well integrated, they respect, they complement one another and basically, he did a great race today, not only the race but the entire weekend was perfect.

Q. After the accident at the first corner, did you ever consider changing Kimi's front wing for safety reasons?

SD: Yes, we considered that. We had the luck to have the safety car slowing down the cars so we checked what we could see on the TV, then checking on the data, and also when he passed through, it seems that everything was alright, no major problem on the data so we decided to carry on.