Lewis Hamilton, targeted by Ferrari, its fans, and its main driver, the Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who did not hesitate to label him as unfair, is not taking it lying down and launches his counteroffensive.
"I don't understand what Alonso wants, I haven't done anything to him".
And furthermore:
"I saw on the big screen that he was overtaken by Kobayashi's Sauber. I understand it can be frustrating, very unpleasant, something out of this world for him. I realize his disappointment, but it's not true that the Valencia race was manipulated. I don't think the safety car intervention influenced it so much".
He rejects the accusations and with irony makes it clear that he considers absurd the complaints coming from Maranello.
"Everyone has the right to express their opinions, almost always the result of a disappointing outcome, but in Valencia, I didn't do anything wrong. I overtook the safety car, which is not allowed by the regulations, and I paid for it with a drive-through penalty, which slowed down my pace. It's not my fault if it didn't brake enough, and I managed to maintain the second position".
As for the alleged favors received from the race stewards, continuous warnings never translated into disqualification, mild and delayed penalties incapable of prejudicing his performance, as happened recently in Valencia, Hamilton not only defends the judges but also launches into a passionate praise for the FIA.
"They are doing an incredible job, especially in terms of safety. Just look at what happened to Webber, unharmed despite a terrible accident".
Ferrari and Alonso (already his rival when they raced at McLaren) should stop polemics, according to Lewis, and respect the work of others. A venomous reply, reminiscent of a declaration of war, brings back the ancient rivalry between McLaren and Ferrari, only partially softened lately by their joint work within FOTA, the team association presided over by Whitmarsh, the McLaren team principal, but previously led by Montezemolo. The two teams, in the name of FOTA, had made peace after the spy story of 2007, but the impression is that now the feud (perhaps only for sporting results) is destined to restart. Whitmarsh comments on Hamilton's light penalty:
"He shouldn't have been punished. Overtaking the safety car was inevitable, and the judges' decision cost us the race".
After the fire and flames, after the frontal attack on the FIA and Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari's first driver, to avoid worse trouble with the Federation - he was on the verge of formal action for a long moment - on July 1, 2010, Thursday, he is forced to backtrack and essentially retract every word he said. Here is his thought, published on the Ferrari website:
"In cold blood, I am much calmer than in the moments immediately after the end of the race. In those moments, you express yourself emotionally, and it is easy to use strong tones and expressions that can be misunderstood and give rise to suspicions, which I had no intention of arousing (he had spoken of a manipulated race, editor's note). Of course, I understand that the work of the stewards is difficult, and decisions must be made quickly. What I meant is that those who, like us, have respected the rules, unfortunately, suffered much greater damage in this circumstance than those who broke the rules and received a penalty. And I am not referring to any of my colleagues in particular: it is a general issue, and I believe we should talk about it calmly among ourselves to avoid such things happening again".
Peace has been made between Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso. After the controversies of the European Grand Prix in Valencia, according to what the McLaren Briton says, the two have resolved the issue with an exchange of text messages. Hamilton explains:
"We are in touch. He has my number, and I have his. I just sent him a message to see how he is, and he told me that everything is calm, that he knows how the racing world works, and that this is a tough year".
And so we arrive at the eve of the next British Grand Prix. In certain cases, it is better to call yourself Lalli. Now Bruno Senna knows it too, Ayrton's grandson, a former aspiring promise of Formula 1. If many years ago he had decided to settle for his father's surname (Lalli, precisely) instead of condemning himself with his mother's, today there would be fewer idiotic smiles around the paddock and fewer sweaty journalists wondering what prompted the most dilapidated team in the circus to dislodge the heir of the legend from their car and replace him with Sakon Yamamoto, a bland Japanese driver with no talent and a disastrous curriculum. But it didn't go that way. Bruno chose to call himself Senna, and today, for him, is the day of shame: one thing is measuring yourself with your limits, another is giving your limits to the legends. The press release that darkens the career of the grandson and shakes Formula 1 on its day of free practice is of exemplary hypocrisy:
"The Hispania Racing team has decided for this race to give an opportunity to one of its four drivers, Sakon Yamamoto".
For the record: Sakon Yamamoto is 28 years old and has had too many opportunities: Jordan (2005), Super Aguri (2006), and Spyker (2007). He has never scored a single point in his life, never made an overtaking, never taken a proper turn, and therefore rightly ended up in oblivion. At least until the management of the Spanish team fished him out of well-deserved oblivion. What happened is a sort of fake case. Because, alongside the official motivation, there is another one. Much clearer: Yamamoto, whose mother owns an economic empire (in the healthcare sector) in Japan, is willing to pay to race. And, considering the technical-financial disaster of Hispania and the poor seasonal results of Senna, the team owners didn't feel like refusing. Getting into an infinite number of troubles, though, because at the beginning of the season, many sponsors had invested some of their money on the name, or rather the surname, of the Brazilian, and as soon as they heard the news, they made their voices heard, forcing the team into a horrendous U-turn:
"We confirm our support for Bruno Senna, who will remain our driver for all the remaining races of the season. Many in the paddock doubt that this is true. But, for that matter, many also doubt that Hispania will participate in the 'remaining races of the season".
Meanwhile, on Friday, July 9, 2010, the first free practice sessions mark the first time the drivers experience the new layout. The reception is mixed, with Mark Webber and Fernando Alonso enthusiastic about it, while Robert Kubica and Heikki Kovalainen express a preference for the older circuit. Almost every driver comments on a large bump on the approach to the reprofiled Abbey turn, with some drivers claiming it is potentially better than Copse corner. The Friday sessions are once again dominated by the Red Bulls, with Vettel posting the fastest time in the first session and Webber in the second. The new layout catches several drivers out, with Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher running wide at Abbey. Whether a byproduct of the new layout or another factor, the Friday session produces some unusual times, with the Ferraris of Alonso and Massa struggling to find any real pace in the first session, whilst Renault's Vitaly Petrov is quicker than teammate Kubica. In both sessions, just four drivers are within a second of the leader. Elsewhere, the new teams experience troubles. While Lotus' Heikki Kovalainen slowly eats away at the difference to the established teams, Sakon Yamamoto is the slowest of the twenty-four drivers, seven and a half seconds off the pace. After surrendering his car to test driver Fairuz Fauzy for the first session, Jarno Trulli is hampered by reliability problems and limits his time on the new layout before Kovalainen's car expires on the circuit late in the session.
The third and final session on Saturday morning continues the trend, with Sebastian Vettel returning to the top of the time sheets, with Mark Webber a close second; both drivers are the only two men to break the 1min 31sec barrier all weekend. Several drivers are hampered with mechanical issues, with Trulli losing more time to hydraulics problems, as does Adrian Sutil. Timo Glock also has little on-track time after his VR-01 falls victim to a throttle problem. Vettel also suffers his own mechanical problem when his front wing detaches itself on the high-speed approach to Abbey late in the hour. The young German driver is able to slow the car down and prevent an accident, and his time remains unbeaten for the last few minutes of the session. The beginning of qualifying is marked by controversy following Vettel's wing failure. Red Bull has brought a new aerodynamic package to the race that includes a new front wing, and team principal Christian Horner makes the decision to remove the new front wing from Webber's car and give it to Vettel. This prompts an angry outburst from the Australian, with public perception being that Red Bull has robbed Webber for the sake of favoring Vettel, particularly following the aftermath of their collision in Istanbul. Otherwise, the first session sees the elimination of Jaime Alguersuari and the Lotuses, Virgins, and Hispanias. Timo Glock edges out Kovalainen in the dying moments to qualify as the best of the newcomers, only to have Kovalainen take the place back moments later. The second session sees the elimination of Jenson Button, with commentator Martin Brundle noting that the McLaren MP4-25 is incredibly rough over the bumps in the circuit, particularly on the approach to the new section. The Renaults of Robert Kubica and Vitaly Petrov also struggle despite their promising form in practice, and while Kubica just makes it through to Q3, Petrov's session ends early when the car develops a fuel problem. Although the team is able to get the Russian out for one final lap at the end of the session, it is a sedate effort that only elevates him to sixteenth. Following the worst qualifying performance of his career in Valencia, Michael Schumacher sets the fifth-fastest time of the session, with the team attributing their recent run of poor results to upgrading the car without fully understanding the effects of their new parts.
Vitantonio Liuzzi is issued with a five-place penalty after qualifying for impeding Nico Hülkenberg when the Italian violently cuts across the Williams driver as he makes a mistake at Abbey. At the end of the session, Adrian Sutil has qualified eleventh, ahead of Kamui Kobayashi, Hülkenberg, Button, Petrov, and Sébastien Buemi, with Liuzzi relegated to twentieth place after his penalty. The final session is dominated by Red Bull, with Vettel and Webber going blow-for-blow. The German prevails by a tenth of a second, prompting Webber's outburst, with the Australian expressing extreme dissatisfaction with lining up on the dirty side of the grid, which has traditionally been a bad starting place at Silverstone. Fernando Alonso out-qualifies Lewis Hamilton after the Briton somehow manages to overcome the troubles experienced by teammate Button, with Nico Rosberg fifth. Despite earlier problems - suspected of being related to the car being caught in a crosswind - Robert Kubica manages sixth ahead of Felipe Massa, Rubens Barrichello, and Pedro de la Rosa, the Spaniard's first time in Q3 all season. Michael Schumacher has to settle for the tenth and final place on the grid after only doing one lap as he had only had one set of tires left over. In addition to Liuzzi's penalty, Jaime Alguersuari is fined five thousand dollars for an unsafe pit release, and Sakon Yamamoto is warned for slowing other drivers. It's all blue again in Formula 1. The Austrian spaceships known on planet Earth as Red Bull still dominate the scene, and with the usual pair of Vettel and Webber, they take the entire front row of the British Grand Prix. However, behind them, and this is the first real news of the day, there are no longer those McLarens that had impressed so much in Turkey, Canada, and even in Valencia, but rather Alonso's Ferrari. This is very significant considering the overall confused state of this sport: on the eve of the Grand Prix, among the best technicians of all teams, there was one compact certainty - this circuit, easy for Red Bull and McLaren, would be a nightmare for Ferrari. Nonsense. Alonso, on the contrary, seemed very comfortable, as he has rarely been this year. And this is not only indicated by the stopwatch (the time could have been significantly better if traffic problems had not penalized him just as he was completing his best lap), but by the entire weekend of the Spaniard, who has been very convincing so far.
"The truth is that we have done a good job with the car lately: it was already evident in Valencia and in Canada, and now we will continue to improve. We had a setback in Barcelona and Turkey, but now we are doing well. We are very competitive here; I hope to score some points tomorrow".
A few words about traffic:
"There was some, but it wasn't decisive; Red Bull is ahead of us by 7 tenths, and even if I lose half a second due to traffic, it doesn't change much".
On the other hand, Massa did not fare well, or to be precise, what remains of Felipe Massa after Fernando Alonso's psychological treatment (who has practically always been ahead of him since the beginning of the year, undermining every impulse and ambition). The Brazilian, who had driven cleanly and decisively on both Friday and Saturday morning, missed his chance and qualified seventh behind Hamilton, Rosberg, and Kubica.
"I had difficulty getting the tires up to temperature".
However, the second news of the day, perhaps the most important, is the unexpected step back for McLaren (fourth place with Hamilton and even fourteenth with Button). A result that, if confirmed in the race, could have quite heavy effects on the entire championship, which would essentially be reopened. The English team, leading comfortably in both the Driver and Constructor World Championship standings, now finds itself with the third car in the World Championship standings behind a Red Bull that is increasingly convincing and fast (although it has not been able to capitalize on its superiority proportionally) and a Ferrari that seems to have found the right path taken at the beginning of the season after the slip caused by the F-duct earthquake (the device invented by McLaren, the imitation of which led the men from Maranello to make some mistakes, leaving valuable points on the track). Finally, the inevitable chapter on Schumacher: after insulting Rosberg in Friday's free practice (a sign of a long-lost tranquility), the former F1 king took another severe lesson, placing tenth, almost a second behind his teammate, who will start from fifth position. In short, Red Bull flies, Red Bull creaks, Red Bull implodes. If the Formula 1 World Championship, arriving here at Silverstone at its halfway point, is still open, if McLaren and even Ferrari can still think of winning it, there is only one reason: the Anglo-Austrian team is not up to the splendid sinuous futuristic creation that came out of Adrian Newey's pencil. This embarrassing demonstration was evident when, in the span of five minutes, with two terrific laps, Vettel and Webber created a gap of 0.8 seconds between them and the rest of the group, painting the front row of the starting grid electric blue. Immediately after, they practically fought. Compromising once again the team atmosphere, as had already happened in Turkey after the incident that eliminated both of them from the race for victory. This time, the blame lies entirely with the team and not the two drivers. In the morning free practice, the fragile perfection of the car betrayed Vettel: the front wing came off, irreparably damaging itself. Since there were no other specimens of that type of wing, the team decided to unscrew the one from Webber's car and give it to the German driver. A move that would drive anyone crazy. And it did infuriate Webber, who, as soon as he crossed the finish line, second (obviously behind Vettel), refused to shake hands with his teammate and, in the press conference, declared, with a face as cheerful as a tombstone:
"I'm sure the team is satisfied".
The team, which was indeed satisfied, tried to mend the situation, making it worse to the point of ridicule:
"Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions, it's not that we favor Vettel, it's our duty to help whoever is leading the World Championship".
That is Sebastian Vettel.
The two drivers, who will start side by side, can do anything in this situation, hinder each other, eliminate themselves, aim like kamikazes at the wall, or replicate the spectacular nonsense incident in Istanbul. To the joy of their opponents, led, at least yesterday, by the resurgent Ferrari of Fernando Alonso and a McLaren that has plunged into an unexpected technical crisis, with parts of the car assembled overnight, tested in the morning, and then immediately dismantled. Alonso will start in third position, eight meters behind the exhausts of Webber's car but on the good side of the track. The Spaniard seems to have found the right feeling with the car, which, on its part, after a long period of dimness, has become presentable again. On Sunday, July 11, 2010, the British Grand Prix begins with Sebastian Vettel attempting to force teammate Webber into yielding on the approach to Copse corner, but the Australian prevails and Vettel runs wide as he makes contact with Lewis Hamilton in third. As the field passes through the Maggotts-Becketts corner, Vettel is seen to run wide, having picked up a puncture from the contact with Hamilton as Webber and the Briton escape the rest of the field. Other first-lap incidents see Felipe Massa earn a puncture after contact in the new section, and the two drivers are forced to pit, shunting them to the back end of the field. The first casualty of the race is Lucas di Grassi, his VR-01 once again crippled by hydraulics failure, while at the front of the pack, Hamilton keeps in touch with Webber as they race on the softer tyre. His teammate Button is able to carve his way through the field, having started fourteenth. The early phase of the race is marked by another minor stewarding controversy as Fernando Alonso attempts to pass the struggling Robert Kubica on the entry to Vale. Alonso is forced off the circuit and recovers to take the second half of Club corner, but passes Kubica in the process. Alonso is given a drive-through penalty for failing to give the place back to Kubica, but problems begin when Adrian Sutil makes contact with Pedro de la Rosa on the main straight. Although both drivers are able to continue for the time being, de la Rosa's rear wing is damaged and it starts to disintegrate as the Sauber takes to the Hangar straight. He pits and is released back into the race, but it is a mortal wound and de la Rosa is forced to retire.
The debris on the circuit at the approach to Stowe prompts the deployment of the safety car, bunching the field back up. This is a problem for Alonso because he is unable to serve his drive-through penalty until after the safety car has withdrawn, sending him plummeting back down the order. Reactions from the commentators are unsympathetic, with many feeling that Alonso could have avoided trouble by giving the place back to Kubica at the earliest possible opportunity. Nevertheless, it is still described as a harsh penalty because Kubica had been forced out of the race with driveshaft problems before the de la Rosa-Sutil incident. Charlie Whiting, the FIA's race director, later tells reporters that Alonso and Ferrari had been advised to yield to Kubica as soon as the Spaniard had passed the Renault, and twice more after that before the penalty was issued. Ferrari later releases a timeline of the Alonso-Kubica pass and following events, showing that Charlie Whiting had told them he "had to look at pictures" and did not recommend Alonso return the position until a full two minutes after the controversial pass (critically after Alonso had already passed Alguersuari). The decision not to allow Kubica to pass immediately after was a key moment in the championship, the lost points ultimately cost Alonso the World Championship. The unintended effect of the safety car deployment is that it bunches the field up again. Sebastian Vettel, who had been just three seconds ahead of Mark Webber on the road, is able to join the rear of the safety car train and proceeds to wage war against the rest of the grid, picking them off one by one. Several other battles also pick up, with Alonso and Liuzzi bashing wheels and Petrov threatening Nico Hülkenberg's tenth place until the Russian develops a slow puncture and is forced to pit. Meanwhile, Vettel continues his charge, made more complicated by the retirement of Jaime Alguersuari. The Toro Rosso driver beaches himself at low speed on the outside of Luffield with eight laps to go, prompting marshals to display yellow flags at the end of the new Wellington Straight and thus denying Vettel the opportunity to pass countryman Sutil into Brooklands. Vettel eventually bullies his way through, forcing a gap at Aintree several laps later. Sutil is left unimpressed by the pass as he comes under fire from Schumacher, who himself has to fend off the tenth-placed Nico Hülkenberg. Mark Webber claims line honours as the first man home, just over a second ahead of Lewis Hamilton.
Nico Rosberg claims third place, Mercedes' first podium since the Chinese Grand Prix, with Jenson Button missing out on the winner's rostrum by half a second. Rubens Barrichello leads Kamui Kobayashi across the line before the German quartet of Vettel, Sutil, Schumacher, and Hülkenberg complete the points. The Ferraris of Alonso and Massa finish fourteenth and fifteenth, one minute down and the last drivers to finish on the lead lap. Jarno Trulli is the first driver for the new teams to finish, ahead of teammate Kovalainen and the sole surviving Virgin of Glock and the two Hispanias. Despite being classified two laps behind race winner Webber, Timo Glock is within sight of the Lotuses when he crosses the line as the Australian had passed him close to the end of the final lap. Fifth career victory, third of the season: Mark Webber has literally dominated the British Grand Prix with a flawless race, starting with a lightning-fast start ahead of his teammate Sebastian Vettel, who was also attacked at the start by Lewis Hamilton. The race definitively took its course after a few turns, with Fernando Alonso pressured by a group of drivers and Sebastian Vettel suddenly finding himself in last position because in the contact with Lewis Hamilton, he ended up with a punctured tire that forced him to return to the pits immediately. Great race by Nico Rosberg, finishing third, but also by Robert Kubica, hindered by a transmission problem that denied him the almost certain podium. However, Silverstone will go down in history as the definitive consecration of Red Bull's incredible performances, cars now on another level. Webber set unreachable times for everyone, while Vettel launched an extraordinary comeback, passing opponents as if they were standing still: from last to seventh.
"Perhaps there is someone up there who helped me".
For Mark Webber, the victory in the British Grand Prix, the third of the season, almost feels like revenge after Red Bull took the wing from his car to give it to Sebastian Vettel.
"I did my best and it worked, I fought with Hamilton, but the first part of the race was particularly enjoyable. It was important to do a great job on the pit stops; the team did well, and when I switched to the hard tires, I tried to make them last as long as possible".
At the start, there was a tight duel with Vettel.
"I have to say that I started well; I wanted to take the turn, and I succeeded".
Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton, second behind Mark Webber, says:
"We collected important points for the team. It's a great result. The car wasn't as fast as the Red Bull, but we did our best, and my second place is the result of the team's hard work. Mark (Webber, editor) and Red Bull are 'simply' fast, they deserve congratulations".
And Ferrari? Well, one thing is not winning, another is losing, and another is committing suicide. Ferrari, at Silverstone, committed suicide. If it had limited itself to losing, as it usually does, one could talk about another race born badly, on the wrong circuit, unfavorable, always a friend of rival teams and therefore logically ending badly. But no, because today's chronicle from Silverstone tells a different story: a good Ferrari, capable of a podium, thrown away due to a series of gratuitous, unjustifiable errors, a series of inaccuracies, sloppiness, and distractions that ultimately crowned Mark Webber, Lewis Hamilton, and an extraordinary Jenson Button at the top of the World Championship standings. The first mistake comes immediately at the start when Alonso falls asleep on the clutch and, from third, finds himself immediately fifth. What happened is not known precisely yet. In the coming hours, moving like explorers in the dense jungle of excuses and recriminations, clearing the usual empty words of the mechanics, it may be possible to understand.
At the moment, all that remains is to stick to the facts. And the facts say that Alonso, at the start, found himself behind Kubica and Rosberg, fighting with teammate Massa, who, incredibly, had a good start and gained a position. The second mistake of Ferrari comes immediately after. Because not content with the decidedly mediocre season they are having, the two drivers started fighting for sixth place as two roosters would for their lives. The direct consequence: the two came into contact, and Alonso's car punctured Massa's tire. He thus found himself last. At that point, Ferrari's race experienced a long moment of calm. Massa remained at the back of the group while Alonso couldn't do anything behind Rosberg until the pit stop. At that point, things shuffled a bit, and the Spaniard found himself behind Kubica. And he started attacking. A determined attack, the kind that characterized him in the past. But today, it collided with the wall of the Pole. To break through it, Alonso made the third and most serious mistake of the day. During the side-by-side with Kubica to complete the maneuver, he cut the corner (perhaps pushed by the Pole) and returned in front of the opponent. Everyone expected him to give up the position to avoid a penalty, but instead, the Spaniard, convinced that he had acted correctly, extended and went on. Ten laps later, the race direction imposed a drive-through penalty, effectively ending any ambition for him and the team. This circumstance will be talked about several times, there is no doubt. And there is no doubt that it is an episode on the edge. What is not understood is why they decided to risk the probable drive-through instead of conceding a position (fourth place) to Kubica. A choice that, in hindsight, would have proven triumphant, considering that the Pole retired due to mechanical problems just a hundred meters later. After the penalty and finishing in the last positions, more or less where his teammate Massa grazed for the entire race (who, speaking of mistakes and inaccuracies, spent more time on the grass than on the asphalt), Alonso started a new race, very aggressive and spectacular. Too bad the cars he found to overtake were Toro Rosso and Force India instead of Red Bull and McLaren. The latter were much further ahead, playing for the victory of the World Championship. A bit of self-criticism wouldn't hurt. But no. Go to the Ferrari motorhome, and you hear no one, not even jokingly, saying, 'We made a mistake.' You only hear people talking about bad luck or making strange speeches. Like Fernando Alonso's. Who answers questions with a confident and annoyed face, even surprised by the journalists' concern.
"The team did everything perfectly. The judges didn't make any mistakes, and neither did I. We will win the World Championship, I am sure of it".
In the audience, there is a collective widening of eyes, and listening to him makes you want to shake him. But it would be useless; clarity, at the moment, is what it is. And indeed, Alonso continues with his statement:
"The team was perfect, and my car flew when I had a clear track. Of course, I had a difficult start... and if there had been a wall instead of grass at that turn, the judges would have disqualified Robert instead of giving me a drive-through penalty".
Yes, but there was grass. As Massa can confirm, having crossed it for a good part of the afternoon, and now he is a bit less certain than his colleague. Felipe's school of thought is different from Alonso's. According to the Spaniard, there are no problems; everything is fine, and Ferrari will win. According to the Brazilian, however, problems exist, and it's all due to bad luck.
"I don't know what, but we'll have to find a solution to prevent bad luck from haunting us. In the last races, everything happened to us".
Blaming bad luck and, at most, a bit of Alonso:
"Today, I was ahead, Fernando touched me, and my race was ruined".
The only positive aspect of Massa's speech is the final realism:
"At this point, the championship is not completely over... but it's certainly very, very difficult for us now. It would mean winning a lot of races for us and others losing as many as we have lost so far".
Yet, even if Ferrari leaves England empty-handed, optimism is not lacking:
"We return home without points, but with the awareness that the potential at our disposal is up to the task".
Stresses Ferrari's team principal, Stefano Domenicali, who will return to Maranello to analyze the British Grand Prix with the rest of the team. And when someone tactfully points out to him that neither Alonso nor Massa scored points, Domenicali explains that:
"We are not happy, but we must react calmly, stay focused, and continue working as we have done in recent weeks".
But where does so much optimism come from when Alonso and Massa's mistakes on the track and uncertainties in managing the penalty for the Spaniard's overtaking of Kubica, a crucial episode of the race, are evident to everyone? Ferrari's optimism comes from the car, honestly the only positive note of the English weekend. Chris Dyer says:
"We have shown that we have improved the performance of our car; we must continue to work in this direction".
And Stefano Domenicali promises on his part:
"We will continue to push on the development of the F10, confident in our chances of regaining lost ground so far. It is clear that the standings have become complicated, but we are convinced that we still have a chance to fight for the title".
Maybe, but the best lap time set in the race at Silverstone by Massa and Alonso remains a meager consolation since it came in the last laps of the Grand Prix, with the F10's tank empty and new tires. Fans know it well.
"We are Ferrari. It's time to show it".
The day after the Silverstone debacle, the first race of the season without a single point, Ferrari's president, Luca Montezemolo, tries to encourage his team.
"I want the team to face the second half of the season positively. It's time to start getting results on the track again".
These are very clear words that admit no replies or excuses.
"I don't want to add anything about what happened on the track. There's no use crying; let's think about bouncing back at Hockenheim. We've experienced much worse moments than this, and we've come out of them. But now we must not lose opportunities like the ones that have slipped away in the last two races, despite having a competitive car".
Then comes the reprimand, accompanied by targeted advice on where to improve:
"Today, qualifications and starts become decisive moments; we must do more on these fronts if we want to win. I expect everyone to give 100% to quickly recover the points we have lost so far. You all know what I and all our fans expect".
In the absence of actions, all that remains is to cling to words. And many words are spoken the day after the disaster. Words of hope, despair, confusion. The most talkative of all is President Luca Montezemolo, who, for the past two years, has become one of the leading specialists in promises, encouragements, admonitions, and threats.
"We are Ferrari, and it's time to show it with results on the track".
The president says from Maranello, without being stung by the doubt that the time to prove it with results has actually come over a year and a half ago, and that, instead, on the track, so far, we have seen the results of Red Bull, Brawn GP, and even McLaren, while there has been no news of Ferrari's results.
"I want the team to face the second half of the season positively".
While waiting for this to happen, for this positivity to produce all its beneficial effects, no one at Ferrari takes the trouble to publicly analyze, even in the slightest, the causes and reasons for the many mistakes made so far, mistakes that have humiliated a podium car to the fourteenth and fifteenth places in Silverstone. No one wonders what is happening in the pits or why, for what reason, in this entire first half of the season, only one correct strategic decision was made (Alonso's tire change at the first lap in Monaco) among many disastrous choices. No one notices that the team counts little or nothing on the political front (asking for the head of the chief steward in Valencia, not getting it, and getting the penalty the following Sunday) and that its second driver, in the current conditions, appears at least inadequate: McLaren's second driver, Button, is the World Champion and has brought a lot of points this year. Red Bull's Webber has been the only one on the entire grid to win three Grand Prix. A minimal, barely perceptible hint of self-criticism, the first in the last twenty-four hours at Ferrari, comes just before the president's final farewells:
"Today, qualifications and starts become decisive moments: we must improve on these fronts if we want to win".
And here is probably space to identify a significant split between Montezemolo, who is not satisfied with qualifications and starts, and the first (and only) driver Alonso, who is still firmly convinced that the team did a perfect job at Silverstone. He said it on Sunday in the general embarrassment of the press conference immediately after the race, and he repeats it the day after through the Ferrari website.
"Congratulations to everyone for this weekend, whatever the result, we did a good job".
In fact, it is quite difficult to have a perfect weekend with a car that flies and finish in fourteenth and fifteenth places.