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Arrivabene refuses to rule out Ferrari title charge

Maurizio Arrivabene has refuted calls of ruling out a Ferrari F1 world title charge after the team's disappointing results in Monaco and points to the team's success having grabbed a rostrum result in all the opening six races.

The Ferrari team principal saw his squad endure a difficult Monaco Grand Prix with Kimi Raikkonen crashing out early on before Sebastian Vettel was trumped by Force India's Sergio Perez on an alternate strategy to claim the final podium spot.

With Mercedes pulling out distance at the front of the F1 constructors championship, while Red Bull has closed to nine points behind the Italian manufacturer, Arrivabene has refused the idea of Ferrari's shot at the world championships slipping away after just seven races in the 21 Grand Prix campaign.

"No way. No way, because you saw the result from here is quite good, Lewis Hamilton is coming back and what we have to do is keep our concentration, keep focus on the races and to look forward," Arrivabene said. "I think this championship is going to be quite interesting.

"The only podium that we were missing is today. At the beginning of the season I won't tell you the story again, you know what's happened, but I don't want to find any excuses. We were not good enough in Barcelona in Q3 and the same also here and then we paid the fee during the race."

Arrivabene feels Ferrari must learn from its recent qualifying mistakes having failed to produce optimum pace in the pole position shootout but demonstrating the required speed in other sessions.

In Monaco, both Ferrari drivers were out-qualified by the Mercedes pair and pole-sitter Daniel Ricciardo in the Red Bull, with Vettel starting fourth and Raikkonen sixth - also behind the Force India of Nico Hulkenberg.

"I take the lessons and we need to really understand what the problem is," he said. "If you recall in Q1 not only in Barcelona because it's another story but here in Q1 we did a 1:14.1s and we are slower in Q3. So that is the problem that we have to look for."

Zdroj: crash.net