Friday: First Positive Impressions at Ferrari

Fernando Alonso – 11th and 2nd

« Even though I only did a few laps on a dry track, my initial feeling is positive: the car is well balanced and no major changes are anticipated for the rest of the weekend.

It’s certainly always difficult to have an overall picture after a day like this, but as I said, we got off on the right foot, which is important because it’s never good to have to make a major change in settings from Friday to Saturday, which throws us into the unknown.

From what we have seen, our main opponents are also very strong: the Red Bull has great top speed and was always the fastest in the second sector, and McLaren also seemed good.

Michael? I don’t know him well enough to speak about him, but he has left a significant mark at Maranello and that means a lot. As a driver, he is a legend: perhaps these days he has to face criticism in the press, but he remains the main attraction, people shout his name, which shows how popular he is.

Felipe Massa – 7th and 5th

It’s difficult to make more sense of such a strange day: first it was dry, then wet, and so on. Fortunately, we were at least able to try both types of tires brought here by Pirelli, even if it was just for a few laps.

With the engineers, we will have to try to interpret the data as best as possible in order to make the right choices: in any case, the first impressions, from what I can say, are positive. We have a few new elements and I think we will use them for the rest of the weekend because they have allowed us to improve our performance. To know where we stand compared to our competitors, we will have to wait for the qualifiers tomorrow.

I really love this track a lot even though it may have lost some of its magic in certain corners like the Eau Rouge Raidillon which is now almost straight, but it’s still great to drive a Formula 1 on a track like this one.