Alonso confident of strong result at home race
Looking forward to his home race, Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso previews the Spanish Grand Prix. The Spaniard claims it's the first time he arrives here with a competitive Ferrari, so he has strong hopes of a good result.
“I think it motivates you to race at home and you find an extra 10% in everything you do, in every detail of the weekend, starting with tomorrow’s practice,” began Fernando Alonso. “You try and do everything well, because you know a nice podium finish makes you happy, the team happy and many people in the grandstand happy. It’s a special weekend and after all these years here, it is more motivation than pressure. I want to make everyone enjoy Sunday afternoon.”
As to his hopes for the weekend, Fernando is optimistic and he outlined the reasons why: “last year we were 1.5 seconds behind the others and thanks to the weather and luck we won in Malaysia. But this year, we finished second in Australia and we won in China, because we have a very different package. This gives us optimism and confidence that we can have a good championship, if we deliver consistent results. We are some points behind at the moment, but it's a long championship and we have seen many examples of people fighting back: last year, Sebastian was 43 points behind us after the summer break and arrived in Austin leading the classification, so in five or six races you can recover 45 to 50 points if you get some consistent results. This year is the first time I have arrived here with a competitive car but we still need to do everything right and put together a good weekend if we want to fight for the top places. We will also need to see how the car responds to some new parts we have here. But we can say we are approaching this weekend with a positive mentality, not a defensive one like we did in my first years with Ferrari.”
Furthermore, the Spaniard noted he is not at all worried that so few people have won the Spanish GP from pole in the last years, confirming that pole is and will always be the best position to be in for a chance to the podium. With tyres however now playing an even more important role, qualifying is even less a decider than it was before.
Pirelli have meanwhile also changed the hard compound for the remainder of the season, with some suggesting it may benefit some teams, but Alonso disagrees: "We will try it for the first time tomorrow and learn something and we will know more after the race, but I don’t think the new tyre will benefit one team more than another”.
