Sunday: Alonso passes Räikkönen but Ferrari suffers
The two Scuderia drivers finish almost a lap behind the Mercedes in this Spanish Grand Prix of Formula 1: although Fernando Alonso managed to gain an advantage over Kimi Räikkönen at the end of the GP, no one is satisfied with this result.
Fernando Alonso (No. 14) – 6th
At the Spaniard’s, fatalism prevails: Obviously, I would have liked to do better for my home race, but I knew from the start it would be difficult. Our pace was too slow compared to the leaders and, on top of that, not gaining any places at the start didn’t help. The gap with the best is not new and today’s result confirms that our rivals are strong both in performance and reliability.
He explains, however, the strategic change that led to him overtaking Kimi Räikkönen: He says, “The decision to switch to a 3-stop strategy was made to catch up with Vettel, but unfortunately I lost the position in the pits and just managed to overtake Kimi, who was impossible to overtake when we were on the same type of tires.”
From here to Monaco, the situation cannot be changed: « We will continue to work day and night: we cannot hope for a new car, because you cannot revolutionize everything in such a short time [before Monaco], but we will do our best to make progress. »
Kimi Räikkönen (No. 7) – 7th
The Finn struggled with his Ferrari F14-T and couldn’t even get ahead of his teammate due to an inadequate strategic choice: « Complicated race for me, with the main issue being the lack of grip and, in general, it was very difficult to find the right balance. A two-stop strategy turned out to be the wrong choice because tire degradation prevented me from attacking at the end. »
If he notes an improvement, he is obviously not satisfied: « Overall, here we were better than in the last race, perhaps due to the characteristics of this circuit […] but we cannot be happy with 6th and 7th places. It will take time, but we will do our best, because we know that we must keep moving forward if we want to progress. »
