Sunday October 14, 2012
Alonso: Ferrari ‘better team’ than Red Bull
YEONGAM (South Korea): Fernando Alonso issued a rallying call after he was edged out by title rival Sebastian Vettel in qualifying at the Korean Grand Prix yesterday, declaring: “We have a better team.”
Vettel was second in qualifying, behind his Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber, with Ferrari’s Alonso on the second row. Alonso and Vettel are also vying at the top of the championship, the Spaniard just four points ahead.
Vettel has been in the ascendancy after successive victories in Singapore and Japan, but Alonso said of the race today: “Our aim tomorrow? It’s simple: to finish ahead of Vettel.”
With four races after Yeongam, Alonso, who like Vettel is a double world champion, knows his fate is in his own hands.
“From now on, how many points one has overall will not count for much, it will be scoring one more than my closest rival that matters,” he said.
“It could happen that I lose the lead in the championship and maybe arrive at the last race 24 points down, but what matters is to be first in the classification at the end of the Brazilian Grand Prix.
“What edge does the Red Bull have? A quicker car, but we have the better team.”
Pat Fry, the Italian outfit’s director for the chassis, added:
“We were competitive throughout qualifying, but maybe we did not extract the full 100% of our potential.
“Tomorrow we should see a very interesting race, in which tyre behaviour will play an important role.
“From what we saw yesterday, our race pace seems reasonably good, but we will have to wait and see what it’s like tomorrow. As usual, reliability will be the number-one priority.”
Alonso’s team-mate Felipe Massa, second at the Japanese Grand Prix last week, qualified sixth-fastest. — AFP
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