Saturday: Alonso and Massa couldn’t have hoped for better
For once, unlike the custom since the start of the season, the men of Maranello were not hoping for better than Fernando Alonso's 9th place finish in qualifying. Felipe Massa, who will start 14th, preferred to sacrifice his qualifying to keep a set of new tires for the race.
Fernando Alonso – 10th and 9th:
Today, we are valued at a position between 8th and 12th place, so ninth on the grid corresponds to our current level. Honestly, given the characteristics of this circuit, which definitely do not match our current car, the weekend hasn’t gone too badly so far. To have a chance of being in Q3, we had to use the three available sets of soft tires, so we had none left for the last part of qualifying. Doing a lap on worn tires would have made no sense and would have forced us to start with a set of tires that already had a few laps on them. Now, we are free to choose mediums or softs to start a race that promises to be very tough, especially with the tires.
Up to now, we’ve always been a bit better on Sunday than on Saturday, let’s hope it will be the same in Bahrain. Tomorrow, we have to try to manage the tires as well as possible and make the most of the three sets of new medium tires we have left. The start will also be important because it would be helpful to quickly gain a few places since overtaking is not easy for us. The goal is to finish in the points, around sixth or seventh place. I know it’s not brilliant, but it’s all we can do with our car today.
Felipe Massa – 16th and 14th:
« It’s not really a shining position, but at least I have a set of new soft tires left for the race. It’s true that the track was improving every minute, but I can’t say if using two sets of soft tires in Q2 would have allowed me to get into Q3. It would have been very difficult, and we decided to sacrifice something today in favor of tomorrow’s race since it will be very important here to be able to manage the new tires. It can make the difference when the track and weather conditions increase the level of degradation.
We will try to get off to a good start and use our strategy to gain positions. We know from our recent experience in Shanghai that overtaking is more difficult for us than for others.
Here, we are particularly suffering from a lack of traction at the exit of slow corners, and that’s why we expect to race defensively.
