Kimi Raikkonen’s triumph on his Ferrari debut last weekend has not made him the Italian squad’s new number one.
That is the insistence of team boss Jean Todt, who after celebrating on the podium with the Finnish driver commiserated with the sixth placed Felipe Massa at Albert Park.
Brazilian Massa, despite dominating the winter pre-season and Australia’s official practice sessions, dropped to the rear of the grid during qualifying with a broken gearbox, thus highlighting a possible reliability flaw in the otherwise dominant F2007.
“There is no number one or number two driver,” Frenchman Todt, Ferrari’s team principal, said in Melbourne.
“We will see over the season how things go but at the moment we completely accept what happens whatever the order as long as (the drivers) are in front.”
Todt vowed that Ferrari will apply “a lot of effort” in the days and weeks prior to the Malaysian grand prix in order to get to the bottom of the gearbox glitch.
He said: “We have proved to be quick but we must also be reliable.”
