Alonso’s Defeat at Silverstone: A Strategic Error?

It was a matter of only five laps, out of the fifty-two that the race included, for Fernando Alonso to clinch his second consecutive victory in 2012, the third since the start of the season. Starting on Hard tires, where his main rivals on the grid had opted for Soft tires, the Spaniard seemed destined to head inexorably toward victory before he switched to Soft tires on his mount: « To be honest, I was confident in the tires because Felipe [Massa] had used the Soft tires in his first stint and I believe he did 14 laps with a car loaded with fuel, while we had 15 laps to go until the end with a lighter car. So we were confident that the Soft tires would hold, but they were a bit slower, obviously I had a bit more understeer, so the balance of the car changed which affected the car’s performance and we were a bit too slow, » explains the Spaniard.

At the end of a weekend where rain dominated most of the time – except during Free Practice 3 –, Fernando Alonso knew that the F2012 would perform better with the Hard tires, which is why he preferred to equip them from the start: « We more or less knew that we were a bit slower with the Soft tires, so we had to build a gap during the first two stints when we were on different tires than Mark, and we knew that this gap was increasingly closing towards the end, when we put on the Soft tires and what we had done was not enough. »

Some believe, however, that the Asturian could have won by extending his first stint on Hard tires since he stopped only one lap after Mark Webber, who was then on Soft tires. Technical analyst for the BBC and former technical director of Jordan, Stewart, and Jaguar, Gary Anderson believes that the Ferrari driver couldn’t have gone further during his first stint: « They stopped because Webber was starting to catch up at the rate of half a second per lap, and they wanted to ensure Alonso came out of the pits still comfortably in the lead. But Webber was closing in quickly because he had new tires at that point. »

For his part, Mark Webber admits to having shown prudence and patience, having himself been surprised by the failure of the Soft tires on the Ferrari at the end of the race: « Fernando was not quite out of reach, and after the last stop, my race engineer told me over the radio that he was unable to exploit the Soft tires. However, I know that Fernando is a crafty fox, I thought he was saving his tires and waiting before attacking. But when I got back to within two seconds, I thought he might have a few problems and that turned out to be true. It’s when you smell blood that you have to go for it. »

But, despite the disappointment of not being able to win, Fernando Alonso was satisfied after the race to have been shown once again on the podium and to have distanced his rivals in the drivers’ standings, with the exception of Mark Webber. But the Spaniard discovered another source of satisfaction upon learning that he had unknowingly won the British Grand Prix: “I just discovered that I was on the Red Bull…” commented the native of Oviedo on Twitter by publishing a photo showing his face among the thousands of fan faces covering the Red Bull RB8 this weekend for a charity event for Wings For Life.