Fernando Alonso positive about F138 - Formula 1 news
Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso is feeling confident about his chances this year, as the car seems to be pretty stable compared to the 2012 season. He is currently present in Barcelona for the
final preseason test.
According to the Spaniard, “We hope that we have reduced the gap [to the top teams] and we will arrive in Australia in better shape than Brazil, which means 200 times better than last year
in Australia. We have now a car that is responding well to what we change on the car.”
During the winter testing last year, Ferrari lacked the speed to challenge top teams such as McLaren and Red Bull. Although the car did not have any reliability problems, the speed wasn’t
simply there.
Despite that, Alonso managed to stay ahead of his rivals for quite some time last year and was in championship contention until the very last race in Brazil. However, Red Bull proved to be
too good at the end of the day, allowing their driver Sebastian Vettel to claim his third consecutive drivers’ championship.
This year though, the situation looks much better for the Italian squad and the reigning world champions will definitely have to be at their best in order to be successful yet again.
Alonso is still not getting carried away and said, “We know that maybe we are not the quickest still, but the starting point and the potential of this car is there. We can touch it now. Last
year it was a dream to make that car work. This year to make this car work it will be much more easy, that's for sure.”
There was a lot of uncertainty during the 2012 season, as the Pirelli tyres proved to be highly unstable. Most of the teams looked impressive over a single lap run, but the performance went
down pretty quickly in terms of race pace, as the tyres degraded on higher fuel loads.
However, the teams seem to have a better understanding of the tyres this time around, which will make things interesting overall. No matter how confident anyone appears after winter testing,
the picture will become clear in Australia.
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