Ferrari: still leading both championships

Only six points for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro at the end of the Malaysian Grand Prix, thanks to seventh place for Felipe Massa. Fernando Alonso had to retire at the start of lap 55 due to an engine failure. After the third race of the season Felipe is leading the Drivers' standings with 39 points, two more than his teammate and Vettel, while the Scuderia leads the Constructors' championship with 76 points, ten more than McLaren.

Stefano Domenicali: “We certainly cannot be happy with the outcome of this third weekend of the season. We arrived in Malaysia with very different objectives and taking home only six points leaves us disappointed. Today's result is the result of yesterday's qualifying: when you start so far back on the grid it's difficult to do better. Furthermore, we had a couple of reliability problems that should warn us: if we want to aspire to the title we absolutely need to fix this aspect. Fernando drove an extraordinary race, considering that since the formation lap he had a gearbox problem when downshifting: driving in those conditions was a feat and he was able to stay in the fight for a points finish until the end. Felipe also drove a great race, especially in the second part and I think the lead in the Drivers' classification is the right reward for what he has done at the start of the season. A first assessment after three races? Positive, because we are leading both championships and have shown that we are competitive at the highest levels. We know where we need to improve – performance and reliability – but also that we have an excellent package – car, drivers, team – capable of making us fight for both titles.”

Felipe Massa: “All in all, we've done a good job in these first three races, so much so that I'm leading the championship. However, we still have sixteen races to go and we are aware that there is a lot of room to improve the performance of the car and to make it totally reliable. Considering where we started, seventh place is probably the best we could aspire to. We tried to delay the tire change as much as possible also because in recent days it had always rained during the afternoon and, if this had happened, we would have been able to take advantage of the possible opportunity: instead, for once, the rain did not arrive . The soft tires were faster but probably at the beginning the track wasn't sufficiently rubberized for them to perform at their best so our choice was the best. The duel with Button was very complicated: he always managed to escape on the straight but when he made a mistake at the last corner I managed to get close enough to overtake him at the first corner. Today's race shows that we will have to fight lap after lap throughout the championship: we have to work hard, keep our feet on the ground and never give up.”

Fernando Alonso: “It was a very difficult weekend. We made a big mistake yesterday in qualifying and today in the race we were forced to retire due to an engine problem. My race was immediately uphill: I suffered a gearbox malfunction right before the start and I practically drove without a clutch for the entire race. If I have to try to look on the positive side, I can say that at least the engine failure only cost me two points: it would have been worse if it had happened while I was in the lead! Seeing what had happened in the previous days, it was likely to expect rain and so we extended the first portion of the race as much as possible: unfortunately this wasn't the case. Today, we gave Red Bull a small gift: if we had had a normal qualifying then we would certainly have put them in difficulty. I'm not worried about the engine breaking: our engineers have enough experience and expertise to resolve this situation. Considering everything that happened, we must be proud of what we managed to do in the race and we must look forward to the next Grand Prix with confidence, where we will try to win.”

Chris Dyer: “A very disappointing race, there's not much else to say. We saw what the potential of the car and the drivers was, especially in the last part of the race and we are very sorry that we were not able to fully exploit it due to the mistake we made yesterday in qualifying. We had two serious technical problems with Fernando's car – first the gearbox malfunction from the start of the race and, finally, the engine failure – which handicapped him for the entire race and then forced him to retire. Felipe had a good race and leaves Malaysia at the top of the standings: well, this is perhaps the only positive note of a weekend in which we certainly expected much more.”