Fernando Alonso believes Ferrari was “perfect” at 2011 Chinese Grand Prix qualifying
The 2 time Formula 1 world champion, Fernando Alonso, has recently stated that he believes his team deserves full marks, as they gave him a fifth place qualification for the 2011 Chinese Grand Prix.
The Spaniard will now start the Chinese Grand Prix behind Mercedes GP’s Nico Rosberg and he is hoping to score some good points this weekend and change things for his team.
Ferrari has been off the pace for the first 2 races of the 2011 Formula 1 season, as the team was unable to compete alongside the pace of McLaren and Red Bull Racing Team.
However after applying some major upgrades to its new car, the team is confident about its run this weekend at the Shanghai International Circuit for the Chinese Grand prix.
“I would give the team 10 out of 10 for how they managed qualifying over these first three races. It is always very difficult to find the compromise between the need to take risks and being prudent and we have already seen mistakes costing some drivers dear
in these three sessions”, said Fernando.
On the other hand, his teammate, Felipe Massa, was also able to score a pretty good lap time during the qualifying session to give him 6th place on the grid for the Chinese race.
Massa is also positive about his chances at the upcoming race in China even though the Ferrari pair was beaten by Nico Rosberg in the last couple of minutes of the qualifying session.
Felipe has been going through an extremely tough time in his career since the 2009 Formula 1 season especially after his near-fatal accident during the Hungarian Grand Prix.
However, he is now optimistic about his chances this year and is hoping to score some good points for his team this weekend.
“I really hope we will see a repeat of the Malaysian situation with a performance jump from qualifying to the race. If that was the case, then a podium might not be out of reach”, said Massa.
The team principal of Ferrari, Stefano Domenicali, was pleased with both of his drivers’ performance and admitted that the team was going through a lot of “unsolvable” problems since the beginning of the 2011 Formula 1 season.
However, he added that the team has a goal this weekend and that is to get the best out of their car and learn more in order to improve their car to challenge the top running teams for the titles.
Red Bull Racing Team and McLaren are way ahead of Ferrari and Mercedes GP up until now but the gap between them is decreasing, as a result of which, the races are getting tougher with each passing grand prix.
Tags: