Fernando Alonso: “Maybe we can have an opportunity”

Fernando Alonso was in an upbeat mood after finishing FP2 in Singapore in second place, just 0.2s shy of pacesetter Sebastian Vettel.

Ferrari had expected to be competitive at a track where the Spaniard has also done well in the past.

“I think we were more or less happy with the car all through the two sessions,” said Alonso. “But here it’s very difficult to exploit the potential of the car. There are only one or two laps when the tyres give you the maximum performance, plus there is always the traffic. On this occasion there were the red flags and the yellow flags.

“So it was a mix of many things happening during the laps, and I think the tyres can be a little bit mixed. I’m sure there are some quick guys that today they didn’t perform, because of all these factors, and there are some other guys that maybe they are up in the front and tomorrow they will struggle a little bit more. As I said, happy with the car, and the long run pace was OK.”

Tyres are a major talking point already and given that Ferraris relatively easy on its rubber, Alonso thinks the team could have an advantage.

“Normally here we should face high degradation of the tyres, which for us historically is a good thing, because our car seemed to take care about the tyres a little bit better than some other cars in the past races. So if there is high degradation in this track, maybe we can have an opportunity.”