Fernando Alonso says Ferrari still off the pace after FP2 of 2012 Chinese GP – Formula 1 news
Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso has said that they are still off the pace after the free Friday practice sessions in 2012 Chinese Grand Prix held at Shanghai International Circuit.
The Spaniard set the tenth best time of 1 minute and 37.316 seconds in FP2 and was followed by Sergio Perez of Sauber-Ferrari who set his best time of 1 minute and 37.417 seconds.
Moreover, Michael Schumacher of Mercedes topped the timesheets with 1 minute and 35.973.
The Italian team focused on data gathering during the morning session in order to evaluate the performance of the car. However, regardless of the updates made in F2012, Alonso said that there is plenty of work to do in order to make the car more competitive.
“We definitely lack a bit of performance: we will try and find it for tomorrow, as well as trying to sort out the balance of the car, especially in terms of its grip,” he said. “There's a lot to do if we want to have a good qualifying.”
He added, “Felipe [Massa] and I split the workload on track and now, this afternoon it is down to the engineers to analyse the data and take the best decisions for tomorrow, both in terms of the updates we have brought for this race and from what we have
learned regarding the tyres.”
Even though, Alonso took an amazing victory in the second race and secured an incredible fifth place finish in the season opener, however, he said that nothing has been changed for the team as they still have a lot of work to do so as to enhance their performance.
Nonetheless, the technical director of Ferrari, Pat Fry said that he feels confident about the advancements they have made in the car.
He added that they are trying their best to make the essential developments and the substantial preparations to boost up the pace of the car in the next races.
He further said that the conditions at the Shanghai circuit are quite different as compared to the Sepang circuit while he projected their qualifying finish between seventh and twelfth place.
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