Alonso sends a message to his team for the future: “You don’t have to cover your eyes”

Fernando Alonso maximized his result to F1 2024 Belgian GP: In qualifying he was 9th, taking advantage of the rain to make a difference and thus qualifying against cars faster than his Aston Martin. He started 8th due to a penalty to Verstappen and this Sunday, in the race, when the points seemed to go away, He chose a strategy that Alonso himself described as “desperate”: he made a single stop and it brought him back to 9th position. (which could be 8th if Russell is disqualified).

However, Fernando made it clear that on a track where his car had to be more competitive with the new evolution package released in Hungary, his car did not perform as the team expected and did not have the real speed to be in the top 10. so, He emphasized that we should not be carried away by the result, that it should not hide the shortcomings that the car still has, and reminded the team of a lot of work to be done to improve.

“Yesterday I was 9th behind the 4 big teams because it rained. I think in the dry we saw today that we are not the 5th team. And today I am 9th because I did one less stopping than others, we are not as strong as they are. So, it is positive to be in Q3 and take the points now, but we must not close our eyes and not see the truth, because we have a lot of work ahead, because we are not as fast as we think,” he declared .

On the other hand, we must highlight one positive point about the car. The race that Fernando Alonso did this Sunday could not be repeated at the start of the course due to his massive tire damage. The damage was lower for everyone than expected and also for Alonso, who managed to keep his tires to go to a single stop and take some good points.

CAREER SUMMARY AND KEY FINAL STRATEGIES

“Ocon was faster than us. He passed us in the middle part of the race and he was 5 seconds away, and Gasly caught us with more tires than us. Albon and Ricciardo were in front of us… so I think We were going to finish 13th And out of desperation, that if you stop you will finish 13th behind them, we continued with the hard tire to see if there is a ‘Safety Car’ or something that can help us 13 laps we thought: ‘ Well, even without a ‘Safety Car’, if we push to the end, we can still make it and grab some points.’ was available. A nice surprise, but it was a good decision because we didn’t have any rhythm today.

THE DIFFERENT STRATEGIES

“It’s all ours. Going to this new asphalt in the race for the first time, we had a plan ‘B’, which was to go to one stop, and a plan ‘C’ to go to three stops in case of that. is a huge degradation , and I think we started extending the stop thinking more about a safety car, and with 12 or 13 laps left, we started seriously considering the possibility of stopping.”

RUSSELL CHOOSES THAT SAME PLAN

“The driver? Not much to say. The car doesn’t feel very good there. When you stop, the tires are very tired and you start to slow down, but everything is relative to the others. The car can feel bad, but if they only take three or four tenths off each lap, they won’t have time to make up the 22 seconds they lost at the stop It’s a bit hard to trust the times and it also depends on the tire not falling too much in the last 5 laps , which has this linear degradation, that it decreases gradually but not drastically.

THIS MONDAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY AND THE BEGINNING OF THE HOLIDAYS

“Disconnection? Total. It has been 6 weeks in a row, 5 of races and one that we were at the Goodwood Festival, so we have been non-stop for a month and a half and now we need another month of total stop. “

“I will do something. One week in August I always go to Asturias, to Spain, and I get into the kart and all the cars I have available. I’ll do two weeks of relaxation and one of activity, for sure.”

SOUVENIR FOR THE PRESS

“I’m finally 43 years old,” he said in reference to the press, who last year, months before turning 42, said he was 42 years old without even having them yet.