Fernando Alonso’s race in Belgium was spoiled by the ongoing problem the team has in getting the best of Pirelli’s prime tyres, which in this case were the mediums.
Alonso was running second in the closing stages, but was unable to hold of Mark Webber and Jenson Button, who caught and passed him. Stefano Domenicali says that the tyre issue will be a key factor in the development of the 2012 car.
“Unfortunately our race was in a way spoiled by the performance of the hard tyres, no doubt, you see very clearly,” said Stefano Domenicali. “A certain situation gave a little advantage to one of our competitors, who was able to gain position.
“For example Jenson started with the hards, he didn’t pay the price for the change of the wing at the pit stop, and having a new set of softs for the end was good for him.
“And also Sebastian who had some struggles with the soft tyres was able to pull off with no price a pit stop that could have let’s say cost him surely more time if that had not happened. In any case we saw Vettel that was performing very, very well, also on the hard tyres. That’s why we were always focussing to see where we were matching. It’s a shame because Fernando did really a great race, always attacking.
“I think that unfortunately we are not happy about the result and the classification because of the things that I told you, and the other thing is for sure we cannot be happy about the fact that when the hard tyre is not working in the proper range, we are not able to match the pace that we should be able to do, so that’s the biggest task that we need to work on for the project of next year.”
Domenicali also insisted that Ferrari didn’t miss a trick when Sebastian Vettel pitted under the safety car and Alonso stayed out.
“It was the right decision, because we changed the tyres later compared with Sebastian. The tyres were newer, and we would fall onto traffic, fall behind Felipe, and the race would have been much more difficult for him because of that situation.
“Then in that part of the race we were still considering the fact that first of all you don’t know how is the length of the safety car. Secondly we were in a situation where we wanted to be in a position to attack. So we have analysed that and we saw that was the right decision.”
Adam Cooper F1 