Fernando Alonso will maintain his lead in the 2012 Formula 1 season
Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso has proven himself as the strongest contender in the 2012 Formula 1 season so far as he is leading the drivers’ standings with 164 points and has a huge lead over Red Bull Racing drivers, Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel.
The Scarlet team had a very difficult pre-season testing programme this year and after the last pre-season test, their technical director, Pat Fry asserted that they might face issues in the first few races while he ruled out the possibility of a podium
finish in the season opener.
Nevertheless, Alonso has tremendously reduced the probable damage for his team
which expected to struggle during the start of the season.
Even though, he could not make his way into the final qualifying session in the first race and secured 12th grid position. Nonetheless, he delivered a convincing performance and secured an inspiring fifth place finish.
Later, he again struggled during the qualifying and secured 8th grid slot for the Malaysian GP. However, he performed amazingly well in the wet weather conditions and scored his first race win at Sepang International Circuit.
Afterwards, he was encountered with problems which included the lack of downforce and tyre management issues in the Chinese and Bahrain grands prix in which he could only secure 9th and 7th place finishes.
Even so, he made an impressive comeback in the Spanish GP and secured second podium finish. Later on, he secured an incredible third podium finish in the Monaco GP after setting off from fifth grid slot.
Contrarily, though he performed good in the qualifying and managed to secure third place in the grid for the Canadian GP but he could only came 5th in the charts as his soft compound tyres gave him away during the end of the race.
Then in the European GP, he gave his best performance of the season until now as he took an amazing victory after starting from 11th grid position. Furthermore, he secured his first pole position since 2010 in the British GP, however, he could
not covert his pole into a victory as he suffered with an issue of tyre management.
Later, in the German GP, he claimed the pole position leading to his third win of the season and emerged as the first driver to score three grands prix victories.
Conversely, he struggled throughout the week during the Hungarian GP at Hockenheimring but performed reasonably well and secured fifth place finish after beginning from 6th grid position.
Although, the Spaniard struggled during the last race, nonetheless, he is positively looking forward to maintain his lead in the title fight and hopes to come up stronger with the essential developments in the remaining races after the mid-season break.
“We finished in front of Webber and just one position behind Vettel. 23 times consecutively in the points is something quite impressive and the team is doing a great job giving me a strong car in my hands and finishing in all the races so this is good,”
said the two-time world champion. “I think Red Bull, McLaren and Lotus are in front of us and we need to catch up. We need to close this gap, hopefully after the summer break when we come back to Spa we need to be more competitive and we need to be quicker.”
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely of the writer’s and do not reflect bettor.com’s official editorial policy.
Tags: