Jean Todt has said that the officials were wrong to disqualify the team. "I have a great pain in my heart, but also the desire to react. That small difference in design does not justify the decision to disqualify the two cars. The punishment is disproportionate."
He went on to speak to ANSA about his feelings in more depth. "What displeases me is that a day like that finished the way it did. I feel responsible, because I am the director of sporting management. I'm the chief and therefore I'm always going to be the one responsible, but clearly this is a technical problem. Soon after the race, the stewards told us that they had found an irregularity in our cars. It was a bolt from the blue. We still don't know why the part didn't conform, but anyway it didn't give us any advantage from the performance point of view. There are no words to describe the sudden transition from great joy to profound disappointment. This is a tremendously difficult time for us, it all seems incredible."
He further went on to talk about the deflectors and the inpections.
"They were subjected to technical tests here in Malaysia last Thursday and were checked every day. We have 10 of them in total and we honestly can't understand what has happened. It's a very bitter blow to us and one we really didn't expect after such a great race, which had given us fantastic results. I repeat, we were disqualified for a problem which gave us no performance advantage."
Todt also believes that someone has turned them in to the stewards. "We think that someone might have noticed something which the FIA previously hadn't noticed, and that neither had we. In other words, someone made the stewards aware of it. I don't know who it was, but it was certainly no-one from Ferrari."
