Fernando Alonso: Championship not over after five races, anything can happen – Formula 1 news
Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso has said that his championships hopes are not over after just five races of the 2011 Formula 1 season.
Alonso stated that although the gap to the front running driver is huge, still Formula 1 is a sport of surprises and anything can happen.
After leading the recently held Spanish Grand Prix for some 20 odd laps, Alonso believes that his title championship is still alive.
“I am definitely not thinking of giving up on the Championship after just five races. The gap in the classification is very big, but everything can still happen, I'm sure of it,” commented Alonso.
The Spaniard’s super lap in the qualifiers surely made the Spanish crowd go wild but in the process, he lost a set of soft tyres. In the race, Alonso suffered from his aggression in qualifiers and was a lap down when the race concluded, with Vettel taking
a win.
Talking about his performance in the Spanish Grand Prix, Alonso stated that he was happy to make the grand stand cheer for the first half of the race.
The Spaniard added, “I tried to do the maximum, keeping the quickest ones behind me for around 20 laps, but after that there was nothing I could do. It was very stressful having them filling my mirrors all the time and we tried as much as possible to copy
or anticipate their moves.”
He added that he had to do more than half of the race distance on the hard Pirelli tyres which was a setback against the front-running drivers.
Ferrari are now 110 points behind the Red Bull team in the constructors’ championship and to add insult to injury, both Ferrari drivers are not performing on a higher level.
Alonso’s teammate Felipe Massa could not finish the race after he crashed in the second half of the race.
The season continues in Monaco on May 29, 2011 with the sixth grand prix of the season and it will be interesting to see where Ferrari end up in the points table.
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