Fernando Alonso’s race engineer Andrea Stella expects better results at Hockenheim – Formula 1 news
Fernando Alonso’s race engineer Andrea Stella has said that he expects the team to be very competitive at the coming race over the weekend at Hockenheim.
Alonso is the leading driver of the season so far. He won the Valencia Grand Prix in front of his home crowd and narrowly missed out on two back to back wins in the season at Silverstone.
Although Alonso was leading for the most part of the race, it was clear that the better car was the Red Bull RB8 which suited to the conditions present at the track better than any other car on the grid.
Mark Webber stole the show at the last minute from the Spaniard but the Aussie is still 13 points behind Alonso in the Drivers’ Championship.
Stella believes that Ferrari car will be very quick at Hockenheim.
“The car was good in Valencia, it was also good in Silverstone,” he said. “And as Hockenheim is a mix of the slow speed of Valencia and high speed of Silverstone, I would expect Ferrari to be competitive in Germany. In the past in Hockenheim, managing the
tyres was difficult, especially the front left and sometimes we also saw blistering on the rear tyres. So it could be an interesting weekend from the tyre point of view.”
Ferrari has seen a difficult time in the earlier stages of the season. Their car lacked traction and straight line speed, yet Alonso managed to do so well and leapt to lead the standings as soon as Ferrari provided him with a competitive car.
Stella added that the team has adapted to the aerodynamic development of the car and as a better understanding of the Pirelli tyres grew the progress was showing as well. Both understanding the tyres and optimising the aerodynamics have been a difficult
task in the current season.
“However, another important challenge we all face this year is not so much a technical one, but stems from the fact that the performance level of many of the cars is extremely close,” he added.
It will be interesting to see how Alonso fares in the coming races at Hockenheim and Budapest.
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