Alonso to start from fifth at Marina Bay
Fernando Alonso will start from fifth place on the grid at the Singapore Grand Prix. The Spaniard completed an excellent qualifying session in which he once again set some very fast times on supersoft tyres.
Fernando Alonso will be fifth on the grid for Sunday's Singapore Grand Prix, after setting a final lap time of 1:44.804 in qualifying. The Spaniard complained of a few understeer problems, although in truth he put in an excellent drive, taking it to the limit as he skated past the walls of the Marina Bay track.
During Free3, in which Alonso completed 14 laps and set the fourth-fastest time, Ferrari confirmed that they will be up there competing in a race in which the team has always performed strongly.
Alonso: “A podium place is possible”
Fernando Alonso registered his satisfaction after the qualifying session. “A podium place is possible, although tyre degradation will be a huge factor.” We saw McLaren out this morning too on long sorties to try out the degradation and the brakes, which also really feel the pressure on this circuit. And so it will be a very long race, with the nuts and bolts under real strain,” remarked Alonso.
The Spanish driver also believes that in Sunday's race “the kerbs will be very tricky, as we saw in qualifying”. “From fifth on the grid, if we make a good start and have a good strategy and suffer less degradation than the rest, a podium finish would be achievable. Let's see if we get lucky tomorrow,” he added.
“A few hundredths of a second and we would have been third, but those hundredths went against us and now we're fifth instead of third. That's the way it goes. I think it came down to those hundredths thanks to my best lap of the year today. I gave 120 per cent and took some huge risks on a number of turns,” explained the Spanish driver.
One other factor which he hopes will work in his favour is the stronger performance of his Ferrari in the race as opposed to qualifying. “In each of the races we generally do better than against the clock. And so we are a little more hopeful looking ahead to Sunday, but Red Bull are too far ahead and we need to focus on McLaren, and try to win the battle with them tomorrow,” he suggested.
Alonso also stressed that a podium place would be “the ultimate reward” while simply indicating that fifth was “what had to be done today. With good tyre degradation and the right strategy, because tomorrow there may well be plenty of safety cars, we could achieve a good finish,” he stated.
In this regard the two-time world champion suggested that in this race “every time a car goes off it means a yellow flag and some will pit and others not, so there will be different strategies”. “Hopefully on Sunday ours will be on the money and we will get those decisions right,” he concluded.
Credit: Fernando Alonso (www.fernandoalonso.com)
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