Adam Cooper F1

Fernando Alonso continues to lead the World Championship after his second place in Silverstone, but Ferrari boss Stefano Domencali says he isn’t taking anything for granted as the championship battle gathers momentum.

Alonso lost out to Mark Webber at Silverstone, but he gained ground on other key rivals, including Sebastian Vettel.

“It’s great to see that Fernando is still leading the championship of drivers,” said Domenicali. “It is from the sporting point of view good to see Lewis losing some points, Sebastian too. But it’s also good to see Felipe having a good performance today, because we have jumped in the classification on the constructors’ side, and now we’re second. And that is very important.

“And if we look at the classification of today with the first four cars in nine seconds it means for sure we have done a step in the right direction from a performance point of view.

“But it is a very open championship. I don’t believe honestly that the others will stay behind, I’m sure that McLaren will fight in order to come back. The others are very close. Today I was impressed by the pace of Lotus, who were very, very quick.”

Regarding Ferrari’s recent surge in form, he said: “I think it’s not a single factor, it’s a lot of things that are all together, and it’s a matter of keeping the right work on the start, the right approach on the reliability, it’s a matter of keeping the development race by race. The Mugello test was important, but after the test every race we brought some other pieces, so it’s really important to keep that as a stream together in all the areas.

“With such a tight competition if you are behind in one area, then it will be a problematic end to the season. I’m happy to see that the people are concentrated on the job, do not care what [criticism] is all around, and stay concentrated. I’m not happy up to the moment when really our car will be the strongest. At the moment we are not for sure, but we are getting very close.”

Lewis Hamilton admitted he was surprised to find himself finishing the British GP in the same eighth place that he started from, after McLaren struggled to find enough pace over the course of the afternoon.

In fact both Lewis and 10th placed Jenson Button were lucky to even make the points, as they both benefited from the Perez/Maldonado clash and Kamui Kobayashi’s pit stop drama.

“It was a disappointing day in the sense that we could have gone further forward, and I wish we could have done more for the fans, and given them even more of a result,” said Hamilton. “And I pushed as hard as I could, I was flat out right to the end. For some reason I didn’t have any speed.

“We have to have a balance to make the tyres last, and I think the balance was not so bad, because I was in the lead at one point, I was the only one who hadn’t pitted, but after that we just didn’t have the pace of the others. They continue to improve. We thought we were going to do better here this weekend, with the downforce package, but obviously not.

“I pushed every single lap, raced my heart out as always, and we just struggled today. Just didn’t have enough speed in general. Jenson seems to have made some places, but I was surprised to see myself go back to where I started, considering I’d made such improvements going longer, particularly in the first stint.

“I’m not really understanding why we weren’t able to maintain it. I was sliding everywhere. The car doesn’t feel terrible, but theirs [Red Bull/Ferrari] must be awesome for them to pull out the gaps that they are.”

Hamilton says that the championship isn’t lost yet, but made it clear that he’s worried about the team’s form.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s that close, but we’re still in the fight. But unless we find a lot of time, it’s going to be hard to stay in the fight.”

Pastor Maldonado was fined €10,000 and given a reprimand by the FIA after his contact with Sergio Perez at Silverstone.

Both drivers had just made their pit stops when they collided as the Sauber tried to go around the outside of the Williams. Perez retired on the spot.

There has long been some tension between the two Latin American drivers, and Perez added to it in the aftermath of his retirement, saying of Maldonado “he has no respect for other drivers” and “he is just a very stupid driver.”

Maldonado insisted that he has simply lost control on cold tyres.

“I was on the inside of the corner, so the corner was mine at that moment,” he said. “He tried to close on me a bit, we were side-by-side, so close, and at that moment I lost the rear of my car and I just touched him.”

Asked about Perez’s comments, he said: “He’s always crying. In Monaco it was a normal incident. I think we need to value where it’s intentional and where it’s not. For sure it was clear it was not intentional.

“I’m looking forward to the next race and he can say whatever he wants. We are racing, you know, both of us were trying to do our best in the track. I was trying to defend a position, he was trying to gain the position, and this is racing you know. Otherwise everyone can race with the safety car, and it’s safer.”

Fernando Alonso says he has no regrets about the strategy Ferrari employed at Silverstone, despite losing the lead to Mark Webber in the closing laps and having to settle for second.

Alonso started on the hard tyre and saved the soft for the final stint, while most of his immediate rivals did the opposite.

“You have to put for the first 14 or 15 laps the soft tyres or in the last 14 or 15, so it was a similar timed race at the end over 52 laps,” said Alonso. “So I was not worried. Probably the start was the biggest worry because with the hard compound you know the start is a little bit worse.

“We tried to defend the position there. After that we were controlling the race more or less OK until the last stint, we were now quick enough and when Mark arrived I think he overtook very easy, and there was nothing we can do. I’m happy with the second place.

“Now obviously, 10 minutes after the race there is a strange feeling of losing victory. But it’s the same 18 points you get if you are third and you overtake the guy in second on the last lap and you are so happy, so it’s the same second place but different feelings in this ten minutes but I’m sure in one hour’s time I will appreciate it much more.”

Alonso was encouraged by the fact that the red car has been competitive at very different tracks recently.

“It was good in Valencia, the car, and here on a completely different track with a lot of high-speed corners the car seemed to perform very well. Also, a fantastic race from Felipe, finishing fourth, so I’m happy with the improvements in the car. I think still there is a last step to close with [Red Bull], maybe they are a little bit quicker in some conditions on some circuits, so we need to improve those.”

Alonso added that despite losing seven points to Webber, overall it had been a positive weekend for his title challenge.

“I think at the moment, as far as I’m leading, I’m more happy than worried. If Mark was leading the championship, I would be worried about losing another seven points, but at the moment, the weekend in general has been fantastic for us, because we left Valencia with maybe an emotional win, a lot of points in our pocket, compared to our rivals in the championship and we arrived at Silverstone, a completely different circuit, we didn’t know how the car was performing here.

“We had a very difficult qualifying for everybody yesterday and we survived that qualifying with pole position and today we also had a tricky race. We didn’t know what the weather was doing and I think the car performed well, we avoided any contact, any accidents that might happen at the start or in some battles.

“We are again bringing home more points than we probably expected, because when we arrived on Thursday, if someone had told us that we would leave on Sunday with 18 points again, I think we would have been very happy.”

Mark Webber put himself firmly in the fight for the 2012 World Championship fight by scoring his second win of the year at Silverstone, and he now has 116 points to the 129 of leader Fernando Alonso.

The Aussie chased down Alonso in the final stint, passing the Ferrari driver with four laps to go. He said the race the victory was not achieved as easily as may have appeared from the outside.

“It didn’t look like a spectacular race maybe between Fernando and I initially, but it was one,” said Webber. “A little strategy involved as well, particularly with ourselves, pacing the stints on the tyres, working out if it’s going to be two or three stops, and how the tyres would behave in the race.

“I thought in the first stint that Fernando was in very, very good shape to probably close the win out, but it came our way in the last stint and I am absolutely over the moon.”

Webber said it was not easy to judge how hard to push the tyres.

“[It was about] understanding the pace to do and to have the range to split the race evenly, for a two-stop Grand Prix. That was the main focus, to make sure that I could get to the stop lap which the guys were trying to predict me to hit, which pit stop lap they wanted me to hit, and get there with the best combination of pace and tyre life.

“Ultimately that is the best way to get to the chequered flag. Obviously you put a lot of faith in the pit wall. The guys are helping you to work out what level of pace you run at, and also balancing the car at the pit stops was important, working with the guys on the front wing. We made quite a big adjustment at the first stop after my first stint and then I was much happy with the car in the second and third stints.”

Webber said things have been going in his favour recently, but says it’s too early to start thinking too much about a title challenge.

“I’m not low on confidence at the moment. It’s going well. I think in Barcelona we didn’t help ourselves with the strategy in qualifying, to put ourselves outside Q3 by being too optimistic about the pace of the car for that Sunday afternoon. Overall, so far so good. We will enjoy today’s result, really soak it up. That’s what’s important.

“You have to remember how hard we work for these results and tomorrow morning, it’s Hockenheim. That’s what it has to be about. I think it’s a long, long season. I’m not getting too fired up about any particular championship positions at the moment. But what is for sure is that I have a nice haul of points to keep going with. I’m not sitting on 20 points trying to start my campaign from here. So it’s going well so far.”

Lewis Hamilton is bullish about his prospects for the British GP, despite starting only eighth.

Hamilton hopes that variable conditions will give him an opportunity to climb the order – and he sounds like he plans to go for it.

“It’s going to be an incredibly tough race, looking after these tyres, getting them working, staying out of trouble, avoiding standing water,” he said. “Of course our experience will come into play, but anything can happen tomorrow, and that’s really the exciting part of it. You have to go in with your heart and your head and get on with it.”

Hamilton admitted that it did get very difficult during qualifying.

“The visibility here is incredible, with the spray. I’m not sure why it’s more here than it is maybe in other places, but you can’t see a thing. Just on the out lap of Q3 I was behind quite a few cars there, and just on the out lap down towards Copse you don’t know whether to stay flat out or not, you can’t see the car for the life of you. Even 10m in front of you, 5m, you can’t see.”

Fernando Alonso earned the first pole in two years for both himself and Ferrari after a great performance in wet qualifying at Silverstone. It’s the first time a red car has started from top spot since Singapore 2010.

The Spaniard had some good fortune as in Q2 he just kept his car out of the barriers when he had a high speed spin. He was also only 16th when the session was stopped for an hour, before recovering the situation by scraping through to Q3 in ninth. On intermediates in the final session he was consistently fast, but in the end he only just pipped Mark Webber.

“We did some tests today in FP3 [in the dry] and the car felt quite good in the high-speed corners and we were quite happy with the balance,” said Alonso.

“But in wet conditions you never know. You need to be in the right place in the right moment, with the circuit in the best conditions possible when you do the lap and that lap has to be clean with not huge mistakes because a little bit here and there you always lose or you can improve a little bit because you never know exactly the conditions of the next corner when you arrive on a day like today.

“It can be a little bit drier than the lap before but we saw some drops of rain on the visors so it can be a little bit wetter so it’s a little bit of gambling what would be the grip at the next corner. To put the lap together was the only thing we had to do today and when you find yourself in pole position, for sure it’s a little bit surprising but, yeah, good to battle like this.”

Alonso admitted things had got a little fraught in the second session.

“I had a spin in Turn 13. It was a lot of aquaplaning there. We changed tyres, we went for the extreme tyres and there was a red flag. It was impossible to run, to be honest it was a good decision. And then also it was a good decision waiting for the time the circuit was in condition to run again. So, sometimes we criticise the decisions when we are not happy with them and today they were doing a really good job.

“The first priority is safety, the track was not in condition to continue qualifying and we wait the necessary time to do it and we’ve been at the limit for Q3, I think P9, so it was not easy. I had a Toro Rosso for two laps in front of me with no visibility, so the Q2 lap was a little bit like a blind lap: you do whatever time the Toro Rosso will do – more or less.”

Alonso conceded that his recovery from his spin was more due to luck than judgement.

“It was very big and you are not in control of the car. You need a bit of luck and we were lucky today. With that moment in Q2, with all the decisions that we make for the tyres that it was the right one – and lucky also that we put the lap together and lucky as well in the distance with Mark because there were some milliseconds. It can be first and second in a very easy way and today it was everything perfect for us. But the race is tomorrow, not today.”

Jenson Button’s 2012 frustrations continued in Silverstone as he struggled in the first wet qualifying, ending up stranded in 18th place.

Button, who was second in dry practice in the morning, has at least gained two places spot from the Jean-Eric Vergne and Kauni Kobayashi Valencia penalties. He said that the session just didn’t work out for him.

“We headed out and said it’s going to rain, and we’ve got to push hard every lap,” said Button. “Even if we have traffic just keep going with that, and it wasn’t really working out for me. I was stuck behind a Caterham. I backed off for a couple of laps to try and find some space. And then I pushed again, but when I pushed again it was too late, the water had already started falling in the last sector of the lap.

“The first two sectors were up quite a bit on my best time. We were in a very difficult situation, because it was do we stay out on these tyres, or do we hope we can find a bit more time, or do we risk coming in and doing one more timed lap on a new set? We made the right call, but it wasn’t to be in the end. It was strange, because I felt there was good pace in the car, but we just couldn’t extract it in Q1.”

Button’s last lap was spoiled when he hit yellow flags after Timo Glock spun in the final corner.

“Obviously you have to back off and you can’t go quicker, and you’ve got to show you’re backing off enough, but secondly, I didn’t know where the car was. It was waved yellows and I didn’t know whether it was planted in the middle of the last corner.”

Jenson said that the track was especially difficult as rain wasn’t running away: “It’s tricky, and a lot of it’s because there has been so much rain here over the last 300 years! It’s been such a wet summer, it’s a bit of an issue for us. So when it does rain, it doesn’t sink into the ground, it sits on top. The rivers are forming very quickly, even if the circuit isn’t that wet. Especially coming out of Becketts onto Hangar Straight, it’s very, very wet there.”

Despite his problems he’s hoping that fortune favours him come the race.

“You want to be aggressive through the race, and there are lots of opportunities. I think you’ve really got to race clever tomorrow, but stating the obvious, you need to be there at the end. I think if you finish the race tomorrow there’s a very good chance, if you’ve had a reasonable race, of scoring some good points, because of such mixed conditions.

“And it’s not easy out there. There seems to be very low grip when it’s wet around here, which is unusual, and something I can’t remember here at Silverstone. I don’t know if it’s the new asphalt or what, but it feels very slippery. I think there are going to be more mistakes. It’s going to be trying to keep your cool when maybe others aren’t.”

Maria de Villota underwent further surgery today, and her condition has been upgraded to ‘serious but stable.’

The Marussia team said in a statement tonight: “This was a planned procedure that would depend upon the continued stability of Maria’s head injuries, and this morning the medical team were sufficiently happy with her progress to allow the operation to go ahead.

“The surgeons successfully completed the next phase of surgery required to address Maria’s facial injuries. After the lengthy initial procedure, which commenced on Tuesday and concluded on Wednesday, today’s secondary operation took significantly less time.

“Since the operation today, Maria’s condition in relation to the head trauma she received has further improved, to the extent that she is now ‘serious but stable.’

“Whilst Maria remains acutely ill, this confirms that she has been responding well to the treatment she has received since her accident. Coupled with the significant progress that has been made with regard to her facial injuries, we feel sufficiently comfortable to proceed with a further update.

“On a more personal note, we have taken a great deal of encouragement from today’s developments and the rather more positive signs for Maria’s family.”

Drivers competing in the British GP this weekend are carrying star stickers on their helmets to show support for the 32-year-old Spaniard.

Lewis Hamilton was fastest overall at a wet Silverstone on Friday, but the McLaren man admitted it had been a largely unproductive day, with the team unable to properly assess its latest updates.

He also expressed his sympathy for fans who spent a day in the rain, but didn’t see much track action.

“We didn’t get to test the components, but we had some fun out there, we still got to do a few laps,” said Hamilton. “But for me I was just more concerned for the fans, there were so many great fans here today.

“I’ve never, ever seen so many on a Friday, and unfortunately with this terrible weather… And we don’t have enough tyres to go out and keep them entertained. I really appreciate the support and having them here, so I hope they keep warm and stay strong because it’s hopefully going to be a good weekend.”

Hamilton said he enjoyed the wet weather driving: “It’s exciting. You grip onto the steering wheel perhaps harder than you normally do just to help make sure you are fully in control of the vehicle, you’re aquaplaning all the time, so you have to be very, very in tune with your senses, more so than other times.”

Unusually Lewis also took a stroll up and down the pit lane during the session, visiting teams at both ends.

“I was bored, and very rarely do I get to walk down the pitlane and have a look at other garages, see how they’re set up, see how their pit lights are, and see what the cars have different to mine. It’s good to be able to see it firsthand.”