Fernando Alonso believes Ferrari must develop in order to remain competitive – Formula 1 news
Fernando Alonso says Ferrari must look to develop the car keeping the Spanish Grand Prix in sight.
Ferrari camp have been pleased by the results of their updates on the car displayed during the Mugello test. Although the drivers Alonso and Felipe Massa revealed that the updates are not complete and at the moment but the Spanish Grand Prix will feature
all the updates on the car.
Alonso and Massa both were able to keep the car quick and at the top slots of the time sheets. Alonso felt that it will be too early at this stage to judge just how well the updates have been and what type of improvement can be expected. Yet he admitted
that it has been a promising test for the struggling team.
He suggested that to reduce the gap between the leaders of the grid is the important thing and the updates are largely targeted at closing in on that gap.
“In Barcelona, we need to do the first step. We know there is no magic button that in Barcelona we will be on pole position, because everyone will improve their cars as well. But we need to reduce this gap,” said Alonso.
“Barcelona has to be the first step, in Canada the second step, and Valencia the third – to be close to them. But the Barcelona one for sure is one of the most important steps that we have to do. We must do it. We cannot be fighting for Q3 if we want to
be fighting for the championship,” he added.
Ferrari has added a new exhaust that is not similar to other cars on the grid but Alonso tried a new exhaust concept and rear body work on the final day at Mugello. The Spaniard though played down the importance of what he tried out.
He said the performance of the car has not been surprising but it has been a good test to understand what can and cannot be done with the car in order to make it the best.
He said that a positive sign for the engineers was that the wind tunnel data matched with the track data which means the team is on the right track.
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