Sunday afternoon’s Bahrain Grand Prix at the Sakhir circuit, the fourth round of the season, saw the Scuderia Ferrari team finally secure their first point of the 2009 championship. At the end of the blistering hot 57 laps, Kimi Raikkonen crossed the line in sixth place overall after starting tenth on the grid.

“I am happy to have picked up a few points but I can’t be that pleased with our performance level. I’ve been around long enough not to get very excited about a sixth place. We are well aware we have to improve. In theory, the new package we will have in Barcelona should see us make a good step forward, but we won’t know just how big it will be compared to the others until we are on track in Spain. Today, we got the most out of the F60’s current potential, even if I lost a bit of time in my final pit stop because of a problem with a part of the fairing on the left front wheel which cost me the chance of exiting pit lane ahead of Barrichello.”

As for teammate Felipe Massa, who started two places ahead of the Finn, he eventually crossed the line in fourteenth overall, a lap down on race winner, Jenson Button. Felipe suffered the entire event after a coming together with the Finn on the opening lap.

“My race was decided at the start,” he explained. “I was sandwiched between Kimi and Rubens and the front wing got broken after making contact with my team-mate’s rear wheel. At first, I didn’t realise what had really happened and so I came in after two laps to change the nose. Then, after a good start with a clear track, I found myself in traffic and my hopes of climbing up the order evaporated. Throughout the race, my telemetry wasn’t working and so my engineers couldn’t help me with the management of the car. The KERS did not work perfectly either, especially at the start. A shame, as once again today, we lost an opportunity to score points. Now I expect to make a good step forward in performance terms in Barcelona. One thing’s for sure, we won’t give up because all of us want to get back up the order.”

“Today we were aiming to get both cars home in the points and we got it half right. Unfortunately, Felipe’s race was compromised when he collided with his teammate in the messy moments just after the start, damaging the front wing: he dropped to the back of the pack and not able to do much, apart from demonstrating a good pace with a heavy fuel load,” Stefano Domenicali added. “Kimi drove a strong race, putting the finishing touches to a positive weekend.”

“His sixth place is a fairly accurate reflection of our current situation. We were well aware that we have to work on reliability, and again today we had a few problems. But above all, we have to work on the performance. We have to push really hard on development of the entire car, not just concentrating on one admittedly very important part like the diffuser. Now we can expect a pretty hot time going into the start of the European leg of the season. This will be a key phase in the championship, although I’m not implying everything will hinge on Barcelona. We are Ferrari and we will never give up until the moment when the maths says it’s over.”