Fernando Alonso, after the first day of free practice of the 2023 F1 Italian GPis critical to the experimental qualifying format that will be tested this weekend at Monza and which has already been issued in Hungary, to try to increase the excitement of the classification. This format forces all drivers to perform Q1 only with the hard rubber and use the medium in Q2 and the soft in Q3. In addition, in this type of weekend the total set of tires for each driver is reduced from 13 to 11 to save tires and be more ecological. This, indirectly, leads to teams having to ride less on Friday in order not to run out of tires and reserve them for qualifying and the race, something where alonso He was critical and came out to apologize to all the fans in the stands at Monza.
What the format being tested at Monza indicates
Drivers usually only use soft tires for qualifying and this allows them to ride more freely during free practice with other types of compounds to prepare for the race. In this case, with only 11 games and the obligation to also use hard and medium in ‘qualy’, The margin for the test teams on Friday is very slim. No one wants to wear out the tires and they did fewer laps than a normal weekend.
“I apologize to all the fans”
“It’s always nice to come back here, with a unique set-up, low load and very fast, there’s a lot of adrenaline when you drive here. Lance (Stroll, his teammate) couldn’t do many laps because of a problem and for me, with the tire performance, we couldn’t do many laps because we only had one set of tires for the session. We apologize to all the fans who came here.”his first comment in English.
“We haven’t done many laps yet. With this current format with so few tires for free practice it makes us reserve (tire) the whole weekend. So, we have to apologize to the fans. We already did it in Hungary for this format “, repeated the Asturian in Spanish.
Unknowns facing classification
“There are no tires to test. It’s the same for everyone. But it’s going to be very tight. There are only 6 corners at Monza, so everyone is within two or three tenths maybe from 6th to 16th”, he said regarding his aspirations in qualifying this Saturday (4:00 pm/DAZN F1). The Oviedo driver was 8th in FP2 after making his attempt early in a car that debuted a new low-load rear wing, an element on which his work focused in the first session where he was th -6. Ferraro and McLaren look to be ahead of the Aston Martin after day one, but it will be necessary to see what Alonso can do in ‘qualifying’ this Saturday at a track that on paper should not benefit his car due to its long straights.
Source: La Verdad
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