Fernando Alonso admits Sebastian Vettel is unmatchable at the moment – Formula 1 news
Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso has admitted that his team does not have the pace to match Red Bull, especially that of Sebastian Vettel.
The current Formula 1 champion Vettel has kicked off to a brilliant start in the 2011 season, winning the first two races held in Australia and Malaysia.
Alonso stated, “Clearly, I would like to always be fighting for the win but, at the moment, one car, Vettel's Red Bull, seems to be out of reach. I was disappointed not to get to the podium in Malaysia, as it was within my reach and it would have been a
great result.”
Commenting on the failure of his Drag Reduction System in Malaysia, the Spaniard said, “I know that the engineers, with whom I've been in touch a lot over these past days, have discovered the problem and fixed it. If the system had worked, I could comfortably
have got past Hamilton on the pit straight and I would not have found myself having to fight him wheel to wheel and taking risks.”
During the Malaysian Grand Prix, Alonso was in a very good position to overtake the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton. However, the two-time Formula 1 champion was handicapped by issues with his rear wing. He was still quick enough though and decided to make an
aggressive move on his rival.
The British driver was also not ready to give his position away easily, but tried to defend a bit too much. This caused a collision between both the cars and the drivers had to take an extra pit-stop, losing a lot of time.
After the race ended, the stewards looked into the incident and penalised both drivers for causing an accident which could have been easily avoided. However, this did not affect the result for Alonso, as his sixth place finish remained unchanged.
The Spaniard accepted the penalty, saying that such things can happen in competitive racing.
Although Ferrari have been unable to finish on the podium until now, the Italian team was confident of turning things around in the rest of the season. The team has planned to bring some minor developments for the Chinese Grand Prix, which will take place
on Sunday, 17 April, 2011.
Drivers Felipe Massa and Alonso were pleased with the progress of the team and claimed that their race pace was as good as any other team. The team was disappointed with its qualifying pace though, as the scarlet car has been unable to challenge McLaren
and Red Bull on shorter stints.
There is plenty of time for Ferrari and some of the other teams like Renault and Mercedes to catch up with the front-runners. At the moment, it seems that both Red Bull and Vettel will comfortably defend their titles this season.
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