Istanbul – After the Turkish GP’s qualifying the Scuderia Ferrari is extremely optimistic for tomorrow’s race. Sixth and seventh position on the starting grid for Kimi and Felipe respectively and trust in the F60‘s performance as well as in the strategy already set up for tomorrow. Furthermore the two F60s have always shown that they can be extremely competitive in the weekend’s sessions and the pace during the race has always been pretty high. Having said that, the lap times in Q2 were all extremely close (13 drivers with a gap of 7 tenths of a second).

Ferrari now seems to deliver a very good performance on any kind of track, as Marc Gene explained in the exclusive interview you can find on Ferrari.com. Marc said that that the work done by the mechanics at Maranello has been “excellent”. Maybe a slightly better set up for Felipe’s car would have been enough in Q3 for a better result on the grid, but at the Scuderia’s motorhome everybody is convinced that it will be a great race. At Istanbul it’s very important being cautious, because it’s an extremely difficult circuit and several factors have to be considered. First of all the tyres: with the hard compound the performance was not far off the soft tyres. Although the soft compound wears off extremely quick, but the track will have lots of rubber tomorrow during the race. Today Kimi went into Q3 first with the hard compound and then with the soft tyres, while Felipe only used the soft compound. Tomorrow’s choice has still to be made.

The pit stop strategy will be decisive. The teams might opt for two or three stops. And then the climate: there should be sun during the race, but the Turkish GP is held two months earlier than  last year.  Just two days ago there was heavy wind and some thunderstorms. These things can always happen without notice here in the Turkish metropolis.

The Istanbul Otodrom is a modern and fast circuit with breathtaking corners, such as the famous Turn 8, which consists of four left corners driven with at least 260 km/h and the highest G-force of the Championship. This is a unique track, Marc Gene said, because it’s also driven anti-clockwise. Ferrari won the last three editions here with Felipe Massa behind the wheel. Last year he even celebrated a hat trick: pole position, victory and fastest race lap.