Despite rumours coming out of Italy that Kovalainen may be hawked to
Toyota for 2008, the pressure is still on for Fisichella to produce the sort of results that will convince the team to keep him on for another year. Fifth at Fuji showed that the veteran still had what it takes to run in tricky conditions, but he needs to repeat that this weekend.
"I have always felt comfortable driving in the wet," he explained, "In Japan, the car didn't have a perfect set-up for the conditions because we had hoped it would be dry on Sunday. There was a lot of aquaplaning, and I was fighting with the car, but I still got to fifth place after what was probably one of the hardest races of my career. The points I scored were valuable and it was a very strong team result."
Ferrari – Felipe Massa (#5), Kimi Raikkonen (#6):
The Ferrari challenge on the title is now firmly in the hands of
Kimi Raikkonen, after Felipe Massa saw his championship dream come to an end at Fuji despite a spirited drive to sixth place.
However, Raikkonen is the firm outsider of the three drivers still in contention for the title and goes into the weekend knowing that he simply has to win to retain any hope of overhauling Hamilton – while the youngster would effectively have to fail to score.
The Finn himself admits that the title is a long shot with the points standings as they are, with his focus very much on trying to end his own season in the best way possible.
“We went to Japan in quite a difficult points situation,” he said. “Now we have to deal what happened there and, for sure, now it looks much worse. But there is nothing we can do for it anymore.
“Obviously, we have just a little hope for the championship. But it is better to have a slight hope than no hope at all. We will not give up. No way. We are fighters and we will prove it again. Now we just do our very best to win these two last races. It is up to the others how we finish in the championship.
