Alonso: Alpine can take fight to Ferrari on high-degradation circuits

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In the round-up: Fernando Alonso says the French Grand Prix showed Alpine can beat Ferrari at tracks where tyre degradation is high.

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In brief

Alonso targets Ferrari at high-degradation tracks

After lining up behind both Ferraris at Paul Ricard, Alonso finished ahead of them. He is hopeful Alpine can produce more of the same at tracks where tyre degradation is high.

“In qualifying, they are four tenths or half a second faster. But then in the race, there are some circuits [where] they are very hard on tyres like a Portimao or here, and we have the chance to to fight with them, which is always nice.

“But we saw in the street circuits, I think, that amount of energy that they put on the tyre is a help in some of the street circuits. We saw Leclerc on pole position in in Monaco and Baku.

“In some of the circuits it is a disadvantage so we benefit from that. But we still need to work on trying to understand this tyre.

“It felt nice to finish in front of the Ferrari, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who is in front, you try to score points. Four points in the pocket, starting ninth, finishing eight, it’s a good performance.”

Mercedes “left points on the table”

Hamilton lost the lead to Verstappen in the pits
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff says the team understands where it went wrong at the last race, and is aware it must stop throwing points away after losing ground in both championships last weekend.

“While we know there is still a long way to go and plenty more opportunities to come, in a season like this, every single point will matter and make the difference,” he said. “And we’ve left points on the table at the last few races.

“We’ve debriefed France and understand the areas where we have the opportunity to improve. So, now it’s all about focusing on bringing those improvements to the next two rounds in Austria, where hopefully we can swing the positive momentum back in our favour.”

Williams make car gains in France

After George Russell delivered Williams’ best result of the season to date in France, the team’s head of vehicle performance Dave Robson confirmed the team “made some improvements to the FW43B” at Paul Ricard.

“This weekend we will be looking to consolidate those gains and to confirm the performance uplift in slightly different conditions,” he added.

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Comment of the day

My F1 Cars: Villeneuve on Williams’ last title-winner, BMW grief and Alonso’s ‘un-driveable’ Renault
Was Jacques Villeneuve’s failure to win a race after his world championship season down to poor team choices or something else?

Jacques was the kind of driver that excited me back in the 90s. And reading about him later, way past his F1 days, made me realise how good and unusual a driver he was.

He was a bit of a joke in the later years, but a lot of his points were bang on. I remember him going public against Sauber for not taking advantage of the rule allowing teams on the lower half of the grid to use a third car. BAR in 2004 and McLaren in 2005 surely got a lot of info that translated into the good results they had, yet Sauber ran two cars always.

It’s one of those guys that you don’t fully understand how they weren’t more successful, how they gathered the wrong people around them or chose the incorrect path. A bit like Alonso, only Fernando kept delivering even with the odds against him.
@Fer-no65

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On this day in F1

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10 comments on “Alonso: Alpine can take fight to Ferrari on high-degradation circuits”

  1. So, Alpine is so bad they can beat the other bad team in the midfield?

    1. Alonso mat be happy to have jumped both Ferraris, but given they fell like a brick and he only improved ONE place on his grid spot, it’s not too great an achievement.

    2. It’s probably even worse than that. Williams can beat the Ferrari on high ded tracks!

  2. ‘Like a Super Bowl every year’: Miami mayor Francis Suarez on the city’s Formula 1 race (The Drive)

    I hope this is not a literal expectation of what he wants 😱

    1. RandomMallard (@)
      23rd June 2021, 8:01

      Also I don’t quite understand the “every year” part of that @johnrkh. Doesn’t the Super Bowl happen every year as well?

      And also I think I’ve worked out the rest of it. It means after 25 laps there will be a Red Flag so people can watch really expensive adverts and AC/DC can deafen the crowd that decided not to bring ear protection because they thought the V6s were too quiet.

      1. Doesn’t the Super Bowl happen every year as well?

        It does, but with different host cities.

  3. I have a lot of respect for Bishop, always had, but posting about your sexual preferences every other day in social media…I’m not sure.

    We could see Alonso smiling large when overtaking the Ferrari of Leclerc in the Castellet, it’s all he wants : revenge.

    1. I was more surprised how a driver reacted to those preferences many years ago.

  4. I share the same sentiments as COTD.

  5. Re Alonso: You can do it because they’re noobs.
    Re Williams: Save up for the Cursebreaker!
    Re Bishop tweet: Could’ve censored that word because it can be really triggering than the common swearwords we always hear.
    Re Adam Stern tweet: GAINS!

Comments are closed.