Ferrari: “One win is the minimum”

2013 Chinese Grand Prix

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Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali said one win was the “minimum” the team wanted this year after celebrating their Chinese Grand Prix success.

“When you win a race it’s always great. It’s a great moment for the team, for the driver,” said Domenicali after Fernando Alonso’s victory in Shanghai.

“It’s a very long season and we know that if went want to fight for what our objective [is], one is not enough,” he added. “It is just the minimum.”

“So let’s celebrate tonight and be focussed already starting from tomorrow for Bahrain because we have another race in seven days and I’m sure that the others will be not very happy with the result today so they will be more aggressive. But it’s great to see the team performing extremely well today.”

Alonso hailed the team’s “fantastic race” and said they had more pace in hand:

“From the start to the end we have not big problems on the car. The tyre degradation was better than expected, probably, so we managed more or less the pace.”

“It’s true that we had some pave maybe in the pocket,” he added, “but it’s difficult to know when to use it depending on the state of the the tyres. So a little bit more potential that hopefully we can show in Bahrain in one week.”

However Domenicali said he was wary of the threat from their rivals: “We were managing in the last stint the pace, try to check what was the pace of our competitors, try to anticipate and control the gap.

“Because we know the other teams, above all Lotus, is very gentle on the tyres and we were just checking that. I have to say that today the performance of the car and Fernando was really very, very strong.”

He added the despite having a more competitive car than they enjoyed last season, Ferrari were not necessarily in a stronger position than they were 12 months ago: “Last year with that problem with the car we were leading, we had won already a race. In the first part of the season we were able to maximise the points.”

“So I would say to our guys that in terms of comparison if you compare the points that we scored last year it’s quite challenging so we have to make sure we do the same. Not only the first half but also the second.”

2013 Chinese Grand Prix

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Image © Ferrari/Ercole Colombo

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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27 comments on “Ferrari: “One win is the minimum””

  1. Really Stefano? One win? I doubt that you sly fox not with that car!

    1. I love when people stop reading at the headline. I bet that the article entitled Ferrari: “One win is not enough” would generate very different comments ;)

      1. @maroonjack I love when people assume the person they are replying to didn’t read the entire article when actually the person did read the article and chose to make an attempt to create a somewhat funny/comical quote. But then again this has become an international meeting place for F1 fans and as we know different nationalities have different ideas about humor :-)

    2. Certainly their target is higher, as he mentions, but this was the minimum not to see heads roll @force-maikel

      1. If Ferrari would end the season with only this win, I’m sure heads will roll.

    3. Taking in consideration what Tombazis revealed about their wind tunnel project and the changes within Ferrari’s organization and the announcement that a separate team was handling the 2014 project, Ferrari we’re making a lot of excuses for 2013 and indeed for 2014, so I truly believe now that they were genuinely not expecting to fare this well especially in stable conditions. I just hope that the disaster of pre-season 2012 helped the team move forward and get closer to Red Bull.

  2. You’d have thought they’d have set the bar higher than one as the minimum. I know they are always going to push for more anyway, but you’d have thought they’d have atleast 3 race wins as a minimum target, given the results from last year, and now that they have a better car.

    1. Indeed the minimum you have to set for yourself is at least matching what you did a year before.

      1. So even though Red Bull won both championships last year, they still failed to meet their minimum target as defined by you, because they won less races and won the titles by a smaller margin than in 2011?

        1. @stjuuv Yes but Ferrari did not win championships in those years, the best they achieved was wins and vice-championships. Naturally when you win a championship you want to emulate that next year.

  3. Ferrari have a lot to do in improving Massa’s race pace (in all 3 races Massa’s race pace was a disappointment)…if they want to beat Red Bull we need 2 driver in the podium

  4. It seems to be a common thing nowadays for Ferrari and Alonso to downplay their chances and then act suprised when they win. Only one win for a team like Ferrari would be a disaster.

    1. Haha, it’s a funny trend to see.

  5. Not this year. With probably the best car in the grid in this part of the season it would be a total disaster a la McLaren 2012 if they don’t win again.

    1. @naylamp Best car? In races certainly, but not in qualifying.

      1. the race is when everything matters

      2. So than you agree that overall they have the best car as per the Chinese GP?

    2. F138 was very good this weekend but I’m not sure yet.

      1. Alonso surely had pace to spare, I think Ferrari is looking very good at the moment.

      2. You’re right, it has been the only all-dry weekend so far. In Bahrain we’ll see. But in the dry part of the Australian GP they looked pretty impressive too.

  6. Yes Stefano, you really aren’t in better position than last year, when you were out of the top 5 on speed and Felipe was doing remarkably bad job even for a number two driver >.>

  7. Two years ago one win was the maximum, as far as I remember…

    1. lol :D Brilliant.

      1. Thanks :D.

  8. I think after Germany 2010, this was Fernando’s easiest Ferrari win. After overtaking Lewis at the start of lap 5, every overtake that Alonso did was on a driver on a different strategy.

    Not to belittle his success though, Felipe showed that running in dirty air is a totally different ball game for the same car. And after the mega season that he had in 2012, Alonso sure deserved an easy win in the fastest car.

    Let’s hope Ferrari keep the updates coming and Fernando and Ferrari finally earn a well deserved title this year.

  9. “one win is the minimum”

    meaning one win was the minimum they wanted to achieve…i dont agree with that. They expect and aim for more than one win, domenicali’s english isnt perfect and he probably just picked the wrong word.

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