Fernando Alonso is refusing to get ahead of himself despite an impressive performance in practice for the Chinese Grand Prix today, as a wet qualifying could leave Ferrari in the dark for the rest of the weekend.
The Spanish driver finished fastest in FP1 and in second place in FP2, and was the one driver who put up some kind of resistance to the all-dominant Mercedes cars. However, he is not willing to make any predictions with a wet qualifying forecast tomorrow.
“All Fridays are the same, a day when you especially need to test the tyres to adapt to the circuit and on this front, maybe it was less useful than usual, because the forecast for tomorrow suggests rain is on the way,” Alonso explained. “We have brought some small updates here, which we already tried at the Bahrain test. Everything worked well and that’s good news.”
Alonso issued a rally cry to the Ferrari team earlier this week following the departure of team principal Stefano Domenicali, and he once again underlined the importance of bringing upgrades to every race.
“Leaving aside the performance of the others, I am happy with what we have done today,” he said. “At every race, all the teams bring something new and we must try and make an additional step forward if we want to be competitive. This track is particularly tough on tyres, with the softs especially suffering from graining over a long run, so it will be important to work out the tire plan for Sunday.
“If it rains tomorrow, we will definitely have less information for the race and we will have to rely on guesswork. Let’s hope we make the right choices.”
Having won the race in 2013, Alonso is looking to become the first driver to successfully defend the Chinese Grand Prix, and with Mercedes’ advantage appearing to have shrunk, he might have more of a chance than we gave him credit for earlier this week.