Ferrari - No blame game

Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali admitted after Sunday's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that a strategic blunder had cost Fernando Alonso the world championship, but refused to pinpoint blame.

Alonso, who held an eight-point lead in the drivers' standings coming into the race, could only finish seventh at the Yas Marina circuit following an early pit stop.

Meanwhile, Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel won the race from pole position to overcome a 15-point deficit to Alonso and snatch the title.

The team decided to pit both Alonso and team-mate Felipe Massa after Red Bull's Mark Webber, Alonso's nearest championship rival, had already stopped for fresh tyres.

By pitting so early, both teams hoped their drivers would make up ground before the frontrunners also stopped but the strategy backfired when Alonso and Webber got bogged down in traffic.

Chasing the fourth place he needed, Alonso was deprived of his target by the presence of Mercedes GP's Nico Rosberg and Renault pair Robert Kubica and Vitaly Petrov.

Domenicali was quick to admit Ferrari got it wrong but said any post-mortem would be kept in-house.

"We made a wrong decision in terms of strategy for three reasons: we marked a rival with two cars, we were unduly concerned about the wear rate of the soft tyres and we did not take into consideration the difficulty of getting past other cars on the track," he explained.

"Now, there is no point in discussing the whys and wherefores of how we arrived at this choice: win or lose, we do everything together as a team."

Bottled up

Chief engineer Chris Dyer added: "We concentrated too much on what Mark was doing and we then were left bottled up in traffic and that cost us the title.

"You could say we looked too closely at what was going on behind us without seeing what was in front of our nose. It's a shame because losing like this hurts, it hurts a lot."

Despite their failure - Ferrari also finished third in the constructors' championship behind Red Bull and McLaren - Domenicali insisted they could be proud of their season.

"We are sad, but we have to keep our heads held high," he added. "We are Ferrari which means we are condemned to having to win, so a second place is a defeat: but this is also part of sport and we have to accept it."
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