Ferrari did not expect to participate in the fight for victory in the Belgian Grand prix, team principal Maurizio Arrivabene admitted after the race. Sebastian Vettel finished second, chasing closely Lewis Hamilton until the very last lap at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit. Kimi Raikkonen finished fourth. The Finn had a penalty during the race for not slowing down at double yellow flags. The warning came because Max Verstappen stopped on the circuit with a power unit problem.
“Going into this race, on paper at least, it didn’t seem like one that would suit us particularly well”, Arrivabene said.
“Despite that, we proved able to fight for the win right down to the final lap. Seb drove a great race and at the restart after the Safety Car, it really came very close. It’s a shame Kimi had to take a penalty, which cost him almost half a minute, but he managed to recover with a nice passing move at the restart. The SF70H proved to be very competitive and the team, both at the track and in Maranello, worked with concentration and determination. However, we still need to improve. The next GP will be in Monza where we will be meeting up with all our fans.”
VET: “It was really intense. I was waiting for Lewis to do a mistake but he didn’t. I was too close at the restart” #BelgianGP ?? #F1 pic.twitter.com/SoGcePu9Jf
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 27, 2017
“Going into this race, on paper at least, it didn’t seem like one that would suit us particularly well”, Ferrari team principal Arrivabene said
Raikkonen did not agree with the penalty at all. He insisted that Verstappen’s car was completely off the circuit.
“Overall, we have been quite competitive this weekend”, Kimi commented.
“In the race the car was good on the Soft compound, while with the Ultrasofts,after some laps,I was struggling with the rear; the first laps were ok but then I was sliding around.”
“When I saw the yellow flags I was on the straight, on the right side and I’m sure I did not go any faster than on any other lap. The penalty was not ideal, but luckily there was a Safety Car and we could recover something. I overtook [Valtteri] Bottas and then I tried to get close to [Daniel] Ricciardo, but we did not have enough speed to overtake him as he was surprisingly good in race conditions, with good speed in the right places. I guess the result of today could have been worse, but for sure I was looking for more. We have to take the good things, we learned from this race and we’ll try to do better next weekend.”
