Despite admitting after the European Grand Prix that it would consider putting its weight behind one of its drivers in an effort to take the world championship fight to
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali has issued mixed messages that appear to suggest the team is not ready to make the move just yet.
Reigning world champion
Kimi Raikkonen fell 13 points off the lead established by Hamilton after Valencia and, with Ferrari team-mate
Felipe Massa stuck almost equally between the two protagonists, it has been suggested that now is the time to back the Brazilian, despite there being six races left on the calendar. Raikkonen, meanwhile, insists that his form and fortune will improve - and points out that he was 17 points adrift with
two races remaining in his championship season - and Domenicali appears content to allow the Finn to continue his challenge... for now at least.
"I think it is better to have two strong cars rather than one," he said on the even of qualifying at the Belgian Grand Prix, a race Raikkonen has won three times in a row, "For sure, we will have maybe to take a decision as we did last year at a certain moment of the season in order to make sure that [we are not compromising out challenge] but, at the moment, I don't think so. If you look at all the races that we have done, there was no situation where one of our drivers took points off the other, not at all."
That final comment could be put down to
Ferrari's occasionally lamentable reliability record - something that Domenicali said that it was trying to correct after two engine failures in as many races - but as much to the lacklustre performances provided by the reigning world champion.
"[Raikkonen's Valencia engine failure] was the same problem [as Massa's in Hungary], it was the same con rod because it was the same batch with the sequence of the serial number," Domenicali revealed, "Hopefully, we have now isolated this problem.
