A glimpse at the Spaniard Fernando Alonso’s term with Scuderia-Ferrari so far – Formula 1
The Spaniard Fernando Alonso joined Scuderia-Ferrari after replacing the Finnish driver, Kimi Raikkonen on September 30, 2009.
He signed a three-year contract from 2010 to 2012 with the Italian team and it was speculated that he will receive 25 million Euros per year as his remuneration. However, Ferrari clarified that the figure of Alonso’s salary is a baseless rumour and cannot
be deemed as reality.
In his first year with the Scarlet team, he faced difficulties with the car during the start of the season. Moreover, he lost some crucial championship points due to poor pit strategy. However, he managed to take five victories towards the end of the season
and finished at second place with 252 points in the drivers’ championship behind the German driver Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull Racing.
In 2011, he struggled throughout the season as his car F2011 was quite uncompetitive as compared to Red Bull’s RB7 and McLaren’s MP4-26. Nevertheless, he strived well to secure fourth place in the drivers’ standing after following Vettel’s teammate, Mark
Webber with a difference of just one point.
Ferrari faced problems in understanding the setup of their car F2012 during the all the pre-season tests in 2012. Furthermore, they stated that they will struggle during the first few races of the season.
It will be important to mention that Pat Fry, the technical director of Ferrari even ruled out the possibility of a podium finish in the season opener held at Albert Park in Melbourne, Australia. Nonetheless, Alonso managed to deliver a convincing performance
and finished at fifth place after staring from 12th place in the grid.
In the second race held at Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia, the double world champion, Alonso claimed his first victory of this season in the rainy conditions after he qualified for 8th grid position. However, he said that the win in Malaysia has
changed nothing for the team as they still have plenty of work to do in order to improve their pace in normal race conditions.
In Chinese GP at Shanghai International Circuit, he could only secure 9th place finish while he qualified for the same grid position. In addition, in the fourth race held at Bahrain International Circuit at Sakhir he finished at seventh place after securing
ninth place in the grid.
He is currently at fifth place in the drivers’ championship with 43 points ahead of Nico Rosberg of Mercedes and he has expressed that they have performed well as compared to their expectations in the season so far.
“It went a bit better than we feared and we managed to limit the damage,” Alonso said. “We had arrived here eight points down on the championship leader and we leave only two more points adrift. To finish this run of four races in this situation is positive,
even if there is no point in denying that we cannot be happy with it in general terms.”
Besides, Ferrari have confirmed that Alonso will run the car in the in-season test which is to be held at Mugello, next week. Additionally, Stefano Domenicali, the team principal has said that they have also planned to launch some major updates in the car
for the European season so as to enhance its pace while he said that they are aiming to secure some podium finishes in the races ahead.
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