Saturday: Scuderia Ferrari adopts a fatalistic stance

Fernando Alonso – 5th and 5th:

We are more or less where we expected to be. It’s not because this is the eighth time in 18 Grand Prix that I finish there in qualifying; it’s because all year, with a few rare exceptions, McLaren and Red Bull have been stronger than us on Saturdays, whereas on Sundays, the situation is generally different, with the gap between us narrowing. We know that we can fight for the podium, but to win, we will have to do everything perfectly, starting with the start and our strategic choices.

In Q3, I considered only doing one stint, but since the first one wasn’t perfect, we decided to see it through. I don’t think having a set of new tires tomorrow would have made much of a difference, partly because the degradation doesn’t seem very significant. Maybe we could have set a better time on the second or third flying lap, but that would have compromised our strategy as we would have started the race with more worn tires than our rivals. I will start on the clean side of the track and hope to gain a few places: the first lap is full of opportunities.

Regarding the front wing, mine worked well all weekend, but the team decided to revert with Felipe’s. In a way, it’s positive because we will have even more data to compare to gain a better understanding of this new element.

Tomorrow, it will be interesting to see how the tires will behave from the start to the end of the race, as temperatures will drop.

Felipe Massa – 7th and 6th:

To be honest, I was hoping for more from these qualifications. I had more difficulties than expected in getting the best out of my tires on my first flying lap: maybe it would have been worth doing longer stints. As expected, McLaren and Red Bull showed they had the advantage over us. In the end, we are in the positions that we can hope for at the end of the season.

Of course, having to use the old version of the wing cost me in terms of performance: in India, when we evaluated the two versions, I immediately felt that the new one was an improvement, giving us more grip and better stability under braking. That said, I don’t think we could have secured a spot on the first two rows.

Tomorrow, we will have to see what we can do. Certainly, the DRS will help us with overtaking, but we have seen on other occasions that even with the mobile rear wing, nothing should be taken for granted.

Pat Fry

« We can neither be surprised nor disappointed by this result because we are where logic dictated. By carefully analyzing the times sector by sector, everyone can see that Fernando was on par with the fastest in the first two sectors, but he was penalized in the third, where there are more low-speed corners and traction is more important. In fact, this is also not surprising because we know that this is our Achilles’ heel.

Tomorrow, we can expect a fairly classic race. For the first pit stop, it will be important to find the right moment to stop without being stuck in traffic. The tires are performing well even though we encountered some issues getting them up to temperature immediately, especially the mediums.

Regarding the choices made concerning the front wing, with Felipe, we decided to use the old version because despite our efforts over the past few weeks, we still haven’t resolved certain issues regarding the behavior of this new element, which seem contagious (editor’s note: Vettel’s wing also oscillated strangely in qualifying). We will continue to work on it, including during the three days of testing that will take place on the track next week.