Fernando Alonso helped to turn the first corner in Abu Dhabi into a ‘wall of champions’ after he joined Sebastian Vettel in spinning into the TecPro barrier.
While Vettel’s car got away virtually unscathed, Alonso suffered damage to the left rear corner.
Both drivers admitted that they had got a bit too close to the kerb.
“I think I braked on the outside of the corner,” said the Ferrari driver. “There is a kerb on the outside, in braking, and looking at the videos all of us that had incidents there or were running off line, we braked on the outside kerb. We try to maximise the track in all the corners, but we need to be very careful in Turn One tomorrow, when we arrive to Q3, and be a little bit calm on that braking.”
As for the overall performance, Alonso said he was happy with progress, having finished FP2 in third place.
“Generally speaking the car performed quite well, we had a small Friday with not many set-up changes or anything like that, we were quite comfortable from the beginning, Felipe and me, and time wise I think we should be reasonably competitive tomorrow.
“Maybe the starting position doesn’t change because the third row of the grid is maybe our normal position to start. But maybe we are a little bit closer than we thought before coming here, because we were quite afraid of this circuit and how competitive we could be here, and it seems that the car is performing well. I’m reasonably happy for that.”
Alonso said he felt that DRS might not be effective come the race.
“For the DRS obviously we need to wait for Sunday, it’s not fair now to say it will work or not. First impression is that it’s maybe a little bit short, the distance available for the DRS, and it will not be easy to overtake. Maybe with a little bit more metres it will be a better solution. But obviously that’s a first feeling – we don’t know.”
Adam Cooper F1 