evancharley5: Alonso: Ferrari now “two to three seconds” faster

Friday, July 27, 2012

Alonso: Ferrari now “two to three seconds” faster | 2012 Hungarian Grand Prix

Alonso: Ferrari now “two to three seconds” faster is an original article from F1 Fanatic. If this article has been published anywhere other than F1 Fanatic it is an infringement of copyright.

Fernando Alonso believes Ferrari have improved their F2012 by two to three seconds per lap since the season began.

Speaking in the press conference ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix Alonso estimated the team’s improvement at “between two and three seconds, but obviously it’s a number that cannot be very precise”.

Alonso added: “I think the biggest improvement that we introduced was in Barcelona. The biggest update, which were mainly aerodynamics on the car.

“We knew that in the first three or four races when we were in China, Bahrain, the car was not doing what we were expecting and when we arrived in Barcelona everything became a little bit more normal for us and from that point all the updates was fine-tuning. But the Barcelona one was to make everything back to work.”

Alonso stressed that the close competition between the different teams this season made getting the most our of each weekend especially important:

“This year has been not easy. The grid is so tight so in one tenth you have four or five cars. In the races we all are more or less in the same performance.

“It’s not like last year where there were six cars and then another group of cars and then another group again. This year every detail counts, every pit stop counts, the start, so I think it’s a little bit more stress on the grid or between all of us.

“We’ve been in lucky in some moment of the championship, in some manouevres, in some incidents and we’ve been finishing all the races in the points which obviously helps for us. But we need to keep doing like this and hopefully have all season trouble-free.”

“I’m really happy with my last four or five seasons”

Asked if he’d changed anything in his approach in what has so far been a very successful season for him, Alonso replied that he believed he’d driven comparably well in recent seasons:

“I think so far the results are coming good and we’ve been lucky in some moments on some details of the weekends and we’re achieving a lot of points.

“But I have I think [had] a very good season like 2008, winning two races with Renault; 2009, with a car that normally [my] teammate was out of Q1, I was in a podium and things like that; 2010 when I arrived at Ferrari you asked me always if that was my best season, recovering until arriving in Abu Dhabi, leading the championship with that car; and last year you were saying that was my best season with ten podiums with a car that was quite far from Red Bull and McLaren.

“And this year is at the moment good things what you are asking me but, as I said before, two or three races some poor results, you will ask me why I’m not concentrating or something like that. So I will try to do always the best thing I can.

“I’m really happy with my last four or five seasons in Formula 1, especially even more with this one because, at the moment, we are taking care about all the details that in this championship seem quite important because, as we said before, the grid is so tight.

“So you need to be close to perfection, let’s say, every weekend, because if not you lose more positions than in the past. But apart of that, like I said, it’s more or less the same performance or same approach, or same preparation as the last four or five seasons.”