Stefano Domenicali Q and A
Were you pleased to not give away too many points to Vettel given the pace of the Red Bull in Canada?
Stefano Domenicali: "We have seen that the performance in the race is very, very good and of course Sebastian did a fantastic race and was out in the lead and able to dictate the pace, kissing the walls in the right places and pull away at the front.
"But when you have such a strong qualifying, then you can have this situation. Of course this was not the case for us because when you are stuck behind you cannot attack and second was really all we could do."
Do you think if Alonso had started alongside Vettel he could have raced him because the Spaniard showed good pace on Friday?
SD: "I think so. To be honest, it would have been a completely different picture. The main difference was that everyone believed the supersoft was the tire for the race, but maybe because the temperatures were higher, it was the other way round and in particular for Felipe we should have put on set of medium tires instead of a second set of supersofts the first time around.
"But this is something that is a process to learn. It is so on the edge that a couple of degrees can make the difference, but I believe had Alonso been on the frontrow along with Vettel, it would have been a different story."
Unlike Spain, there were not a lot of stops. Have the teams turned the corner in understanding the tires?
SD: "No. I don't know, that is the funny thing about Formula 1. I remember some teams were keen to change something many days ago, but now it seems perfect. You know my style, stay cool and relaxed and not overreact after a session.
"This is part of this game and it is something for our engineers to understand – sometimes we understand it better than the others, sometimes it is the other way round – but this is the challenge we have to face this year."
Have you any thoughts on the Pirelli prototype tires?
SD: "Not really. Now we are waiting to see because I believe that the test that we did with the prototype tires in Canada was not enough as the conditions were very extreme. I believe there is the need to do some more testing, but we will discuss it over the coming days."
Sebastian has been scoring consistently this year and now has a 36-point lead. Do you need him to have problems to catch him or can you race-by-race inch towards him?
SD: "For sure if it happened I would not be crying, but because I am a sporting man I would not wish him to have problems. I believe that he has been very consistent up until now, but this year things can change very quickly – if he has a difficult race then things can change again.
"Last year we had an advantage of 50 points or less over the summer break and we lost the title, although some things were not in our hands. I cannot watch out, I can only watch in and for sure the car needs to improve."