Alonso: No “magical changes” for Ferrari in Bahrain

After two fourth-place finishes in Australia and Malaysia, Fernando Alonso approaches the Bahrain Grand Prix with the feeling that the difficulties Ferrari has encountered in terms of race pace, preventing him from regularly competing with Mercedes and Red Bull, will not be resolved in Sakhir due to lack of time.

“For Bahrain, I don’t think it will change much in the movie compared to here,” he confides to Autosport. “Obviously, in a few days we are on track, so the cars will be more or less similar.”

Unfortunately, I don’t see much to do in terms of magical changes, because there are only 5 days [between now and Sepang], but no one in the team is giving up. We know what we need to do, we have the potential, we have talented people, we have the resources, he stated.

According to him, despite everything, notable progress has been made by Ferrari and it was visible in Malaysia: « We were a little faster than in Melbourne. It is true that we finished 35 seconds behind Rosberg in Melbourne, but there was a safety car. Without it, we might have been a minute behind Mercedes. Now, we are 35 seconds behind, which is not good and we need to be better. »

Sakhir is a fast circuit, and one of the problems faced by Ferrari might be reduced top speed compared to the Mercedes engine, which was noticed in Australia against Nico Hülkenberg. For the Spaniard, this data will play an essential role in the Grand Prix results: The characteristics of the [Sakhir] track are a bit different. With long straights, we will probably see that a car with very good top speed will be competitive.

The double World Champion added, to conclude: « It’s going to be tough once again, but despite everything, we have always managed to be in the top 5, which, given our current performance, gives us some good points. »