Fernando Alonso: “We need to be clever and do a good lap…”

Fernando Alonso was typically cautious about Ferrari’s prospects for the weekend after finishing top of both sessions on Thursday in Monaco. However he was just 0.073s ahead of Sebastian Vettel in the morning 0.109s clear of Nico Rosberg in the afternoon, leaving him convinced that it might be tough to stay on top for the rest of the weekend.

“I think for sure this is a circuit to get confidence as soon as possible, it’s a circuit that you need to feel OK in the car,” said Alonso. “And to maximise the potential it’s very good to start in a good way, because you don’t need to get crazy or change completely the set-up or to find miracles for Saturday. You just need some continuity in the set-up, in the way you do the runs.

“Overall we found a car very good from the beginning, very easy to drive. I think Felipe and me we’re happy with today’s session, but we know in qualifying everything will be very close. As we saw today, in 0.3s there were seven or eight cars, so we cannot afford a mistake on the driver’s side or the set-up side. We need to be perfect on Saturday.

“I think we have improved a little bit since Barcelona. Hopefully we are not one second behind Red Bull, but we need to wait until Saturday. We saw some strong Fridays for us, or strong Fridays for McLaren, and then on Saturday Red Bull got the pole position very easy. We need to be clever and do a good lap on Saturday, because if not, you can end up sixth or seventh, as we saw today.”

Fernando also confessed to a scrape with the wall: “I think I touched the barrier at Casino, Turn 3 on the inside, just hit the wall 1mm, but enough to break a little bit the front wing, even if I kept running with no problems.”

Alonso admitted that as everyone had predicted, traffic could be a problem in qualifying.

“It was difficult for everybody, it’s a lot of cars all together at some moments of the session, but as I said yesterday I think it’s a challenge for all of us, a challenge for the drivers to get the space to do a lap and not to disturb anyone, and it’s a challenge for the team as well to find the right time to go out and the right strategy to go through Q1.

“I think Q2 and Q3 will be much easier because the cars are reduced. Q1 is a time that we need to focus, we need to concentrate, we need to put a lap together. Maybe we don’t need to do a super lap, we just need to be in the first 15 or 16, so we should be able to do that.”