Whilst Ferrari will receive more prize money than any of the teams on the grid, including Red Bull and Mercedes thanks to an agreement with Bernie Ecclestone, they were left frustrated after finishing third in the Constructors’ Championship.
Team principal Stefano Domenicali believes a ‘harsh’ decision by the Brazilian race stewards cost them a 3-4 finish as Felipe Massa – who has already blasted the decision – was on for fifth before Lewis Hamilton was penalised for contact with Valtteri Bottas.
Had they finished in those positions, they would have outscored Mercedes sufficiently to take second from the Brackley team.
“Frustrated in a way because retrospectively of course without the penalty – which in my view was a little bit too harsh – to Felipe then it would have been a different situation,” he said. “So that’s unfortunate, but as I said for me that was a little bit too harsh.
“There was a warning and we reported it to him but in my view it was very harsh. If you think there was not really any safety aspect, there was not really any gain of any kind of advantage. You see many times track limits are not respected but anyway, that decision was taken. As I said for me it was very harsh considering the result.”
He was however happy to see Ferrari perform so well in the race and fully expects them to be fighting for first place next season.
“I’m happy at least that we finished the race in a championship that was tough this year, especially in the second half of the season, with this result,” he added.
“So there are positive signs in a season that of course was not really very good and positive for us, but at the end of the day we need to recover from the mistakes and the problems we had this year.
“I talked to my engineers, heads down in to work and nothing more to say. The changes that we’ve done I think are the right ones to make sure that next year we will be fighting not for second position but for first as we were here last year. And don’t forget last year without events that were out of our control we would have been in a different position.”
