Alonso doubts kerbs were to blame for punctures

2013 British Grand Prix

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Fernando Alonso admitted he was scared when Sergio Perez’s tyre exploded in front of him during the British Grand Prix.

But the Ferrari drivers said he didn’t follow the instructions to stay off the kerbs which were claimed to be contributing to the tyre failures.

“I had two moments: that one with Sergio I was so scared and I was so lucky because I missed the contact by one centimetre,” said Alonso after the race. “And also at the start into turn one I locked the tyres, I nearly lost the front wing.”

Alonso said he also nearly fell victim to a tyre explosion: “We had some tyre failures ourselves in the first stop but it was happening in the last corner and I came to the pits so I lost nothing.”

However he doubted the advice given to the drivers to stay off the kerbs was useful: “It was impossible. I didn’t stay off the kerbs to be honest.”

“I was fighting, I was position eleven, ninth, eighth, you are in third gear behind people always running so you are not in control perfectly on the car, where you will position the car at the exit of the corners.

“And I don’t think the kerbs have any influence because I’ve been racing 12 years now in Silverstone and the kerbs they were never a problem. So I don’t think this year they were a problem.”

Alonso added he was relieved to have cut Sebastian Vettel’s lead by 15 points on a day when the Ferrari was much less competitive than the Red Bull.

“Mixed feelings to be honest,” he added. “Happy for the points, we reduced the gap a little bit in this race.”

“But the pace we saw this weekend is not good enough. There was some other Sundays when we lost some points and I was a bit optimistic. Today we recovered some points but we know there is a lot of work to do.

“But I trust the team. We are united. We have a difficult weekend, we put the cross and now we think of the next one.”

2013 British Grand Prix

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Image © Ferrari/Ercole Colombo

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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22 comments on “Alonso doubts kerbs were to blame for punctures”

  1. Alonso has unbelievable luck

    1. If your referring to the tyres the whole grid was lucky. If your referring to the car it’s not luck it’s Ferrari reliability. If Alonso was really that lucky he would be leading the championship by now and not trailing it. That said, He really needs to pick up his game in Qualifying to stand any hope.

      1. his qualy is fine…..the car just do not have big margin for error unlike merc and rbr.

        People like to over-hype some driver’s speed to the status of “incredible” when they were driving the best cars.

        No one willing to give Rosberg credit before lewis came onboard.

        1. I always gave Rosberg credit. In fact he raced against Lewis in junior leagues and they were pretty competitive. Schumacher wasn’t disgraced by Rosberg because ‘Der Shumi’ couldnt get back in the groove, the car wasn’t built for him or whatever excuse was given. Rosberg was simply better.

          But yeah, Lewis certainly helped turn that team around. Perhaps just changing brake material helped them a lot already.

          1. tell me you are joking when you mention by changing brake material can make the car being the fastest on the grid.

  2. Brilliant reaction by Alonso to get out of Sergio’s slipstream. I was sure Alonso was about to lose his frontwing.

  3. I think Alonso is right about the Kerbs. Sure they might have an effect on the issue, as something of a trigger. But this is not just about kerbs.

    1. +1 completly agree.

      The kerb might be doing the cutting, but the tyres wernt blowing up at Bahrain/Barcelona/Silverstone in previous years even though the kerbs where the same and the drivers lines were the same. Its the construction of the tyres.

      Whats worse is that Pirelli fixed this problem a while ago but certin teams veto’d the idea of bringing the new tyres for fear of losing their advantage.

      Lets hope noone has a blow-out heading up the hill at Eu-Rouge.

  4. I agree with Alsonso. It felt he was a bit scared when the Tires blew up in front of him. in fact he lost a position or so in that whole drama at that point.

    1. He didn’t actually lose any positions, in the drama button was overtaken by Hamilton but alonso just overtook Perez and suffered very little in the way of losing time

  5. On the BBC Gary Anderson is convinced it was the kurb at turn 4.

    However that kurb has been the same since the track was altered in 2010 & drivers have been running the same racing line there since 2010.
    Anthony Davidson said on sky that they use the same line through there in the WEC & have never had problems.

    Plus we’ve had GP2/GP3 & Porsche Supercup this weekend all running the same line over the kurbs at turn 4 & have suffered zero problems.

    1. Although Alonso may have raced at Silverstone 12 times, he has only raced on the new section 4 times, and only 3 times in dry conditions. The 2011 race was rain-affected, so the new section of the circuit has only seen two dry races prior to this one.

      There were punctures on both occasions. In the 2010 race Vettel and Massa sustained punctures in that part of the track, although (at the time at least) both seemed attributable to contact with other cars. In the 2012 race Di Resta sustained a puncture in that part of the track, although again it seemed to result from contact.

      We also can’t rule out the possibility that the kerb’s position has changed from year to year.

      In short, I think it would be unwise to rule out the kerbs as a possible contributing factor without more evidence.

    2. But tyres are not the same.

      1. Thats it, the tyres are not the same, the track is. The amount of delaminations this year is a joke no one can argue, but just cause Gary Anderson (A very clever man) says “Nope, its the kerb at turn 4” we should not be so quick to blame the track. Personally i think Brawn and his engineers hat has got the right idea, wait for the facts.

  6. Shreyas Mohanty (@)
    30th June 2013, 16:25

    To be honest seeing someone’s tyre explode right in front of you when you are travelling close to 200 miles an hour is scary as a thought itself. So three cheers for the guy’s reflexes. I felt sure he must have peed his pants, but he didn’t. :p

  7. Shreyas Mohanty (@)
    30th June 2013, 16:28

    It is of course non-sense that the kerbs were to blame. There are many events on that track on the same racing line. So why were only Pirelli tyres ripped to shreds?

  8. If the kerbs were the issue, then shouldn’t there have been some problems at least during the free practice and the qualifying sessions over the last 2 days.

    1. So what are you saying? That they changed the tyres between practice and race day?

      There actually was a tyre failure during practice and they don’t run the tyres down to the wire so much in practice. perhaps the tyres did delaminate, but the teams noticed them between stints and replaced them. Like Rosberg did during the race.

  9. Ferrari seemed to be quick in the first couple laps but then they were actually slowing the people they had taken previously, I’m baffled by their performance, because to a certain extent this track is similar to china and spain where they coped well with the front tyre limitations.

  10. Speaking to someone from FOM in total this year there has been 20 failures be it delamination or total failures, There has also been a further 27 cases of tyres suffering damage which would have eventually led to a failure.

  11. That onboard replay of Alonso when Perez’s tyre exploded was scary. It’s great to see how quickly Alonso reacted.

  12. Straight talk is such scarce resource in Britain.

    Did someone decide to fiddle with Silverton kerbs, just to mess up this year’s Grand Prix???
    Of-course not…..

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