28/05/2013
NEWS STORY
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Back home in Maranello, Ferrari has confirmed that post-race investigation revealed a suspension failure was to blame for Felipe Massa's crash during the Monaco Grand Prix.
On the 29th lap of the race the Brazilian veered into the barriers on the left hand side at the end of the main straight bouncing into the barriers on the outside at Ste Devote. The crash was a carbon copy of an incident involving the Brazilian just twenty-four hours earlier and left him unable to take part in qualifying.
However, whilst the first crash was said to be driver error, back home in Italy, and away from the media spotlight that was the Principality, Ferrari claims the second crash - which was virtually identical, was due to a suspension failure.
"The findings validated the first impressions of the engineers," said the team on its website, "confirming that the accident was caused by an element of the front left suspension breaking. With all the required inspections completed to analyse what happened at the Monegasque circuit, the Car Assembly department can now start work in preparing the car for the Canadian Grand Prix."
After a miserable weekend in Monaco, just two weeks after both his drivers made it on to the Barcelona podium, team boss Stefano Domenicali remained philosophical.
"This championship seems to be a real rollercoaster of emotions," he told the team website. "Following on from a good weekend comes a bad one. That was the case in the first four races outside Europe and nothing has changed now we are back on the Old Continent. I can confirm that we didn’t get carried away when we won, nor did we beat ourselves up when things did not go as well as expected. But from now on, it will be important to establish a consistent level of performance.
"The Championship standings are very close and the number of strong opponents is ever increasing," he continued. "It’s a scenario in which each point is precious and each hundredth of performance becomes important and obviously we are well aware that one less reliability problem can be very significant in terms of how the championship pans out. We have a lot of work to do in the coming days to be as well prepared as possible for Montreal. We have all rolled our sleeves up and are focussed on the tasks that lie ahead of us.
"The best news to come out of the Monaco weekend is that Felipe is fine," he added. "Two big accidents, just over twenty fours apart and all he has to show for it is a bit of muscle pain. Fortunately there were no other injuries."