Fernando Alonso believes Ferrari can match Lotus pace in Malaysia – Formula 1 news
Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso has said that they can match the pace of one of their main rivals, Lotus in the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix which is to be held at Sepang International Circuit this weekend.
Alonso struggled a little bit during the qualifying of the Australian GP at Albert Park and could only secure 5th grid slot. However, he performed amazingly well during the race and successfully managed to secure second podium finish ahead of
the defending champion, Sebastian Vettel and behind Kimi Raikkonen of Lotus.
Although, Raikkonen started the race from 7th grid position, but he showed commendable pace during the race and managed his tyres efficiently to claim his first victory of the season.
The Spaniard has said that the Finn showed a very good place in the season opener. But, he expressed that the Enstone based squad followed a very effective strategy and didn’t face any traffic. Therefore, he believes that they can surely match the pace of
Lotus in the second race.
“I think the pace of the Lotus was very good but nothing we could not do,” Alonso said. “They had a very clean race with no traffic and a very good strategy but the pace was nothing out of reach. So I think here we can fight a little bit closer.”
It will be important to mention that the Scarlet team faced immense problems during the last year’s pre-season testing. However, the two-time world champion has expressed satisfaction regarding their development process for this season. In addition, he said
that they have been able to develop quite a competitive car for this year’s championship as compared to the last one.
Besides, he said that after securing good result in the first race, they are now looking forward to attain competitive results in the forthcoming races.
“This year is a little bit better in this aspect; we have more-or-less competitive car, in Australia everything worked quite fine for us and we showed good potential but it's true that Australia circuit is very strange and very unusual circuit so this weekend
is for us a little bit of confirmation,” he added.
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