- 1 -
ALONSO BATTLES IN SPAIN
Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso thrilled the Spanish crowd with a fantastic demonstration of driving skill today in the Spanish Grand Prix at the weekend (22 May 2011), but in the end, the superior car performance of our two closest rivals meant he had to settle for fifth place.
“The best bit of the race was obviously the start,” said Alonso. “We have worked so much on this area and you could see the outcome. It was fantastic to see the crowd cheering in the grandstands! I tried to do the maximum, keeping the quickest ones behind me for around twenty laps, but after that, there was nothing I could do. It was very stressful having them filling my mirrors all the time and we tried as much as possible to copy or anticipate their moves. That meant doing over the half the race on the hards, which penalised us heavily and made the gap bigger than it is in reality. We lack aerodynamic downforce: here we did not have a wing that suited this track. We must analyse carefully the behaviour of all the modifications we brought to this Grand Prix and understand why, in the space of two weeks, we have lost ground to Red Bull and McLaren. Now we head off to Monaco immediately for what is a special race on the calendar. Anything could happen there. Sure, we know the amount of downforce required at this track is the highest of the year, but that was also the case last year and we were competitive. I am definitely not thinking of giving up on the championship after just five races: the gap in the classification is very big, but everything can still happen, I’m sure of it.”
Felipe Massa had a difficult afternoon which came to a premature end, when he retired with a gearbox problem a few laps from the flag. Massa explained after the race what went wrong.
“Towards the end of the race I could not select the gears and I had to stop at the side of the track: it was a fitting end to a terrible weekend,” he said. “Luckily, we can start again immediately, with the Monaco race, which is something of a second home race for me, given that I live in the Principality. Also luckily, we will not have the hard tyres we had today that really did not work for us. When we went from the option to the prime we began to suffer more and more: there was no grip and I was struggling to keep the car on track. Thanks to the strategy, we had managed to pass the Mercedes and Petrov’s Renault, but it all came to nothing in the end. We did not have enough aerodynamic downforce to get the hard tyres to work properly, as indeed we have already seen at other races, but here it was even more of a problem.”
Sebastian Vettel took his fourth win of the season and was joined on the podium by the two McLaren drivers; Lewis Hamilton second and Jenson Button third.
As the lights went out second placed Vettel was all over his pole starting team-mate and with the two Red Bulls fighting and thanks to a great getaway off the line, Fernando was able to rush into the lead, to huge cheers from the partisan crowd and the Ferrari 150º Italia led the first two stints of the race, that saw all the front runners, with the exception of Button, making four stops to change tyres.
As expected, the DRS was not so effective here as in Turkey, which helped Fernando keep the others behind him. Vettel then tried to get ahead by pitting one lap earlier, but it was not enough to get past the Ferrari, while Fernando and Webber came in at the same time, maintaining that order as they left. It was not until the second stops, on lap 18 for Vettel and 19 for Webber and Fernando, that the German took the lead. Hamilton had a long second stint coming in on lap 23 and that proved a key moment as it got him ahead of the duel between the Spaniard and the Australian and into second place. From then on, the Englishman put the reigning world champion under huge pressure all race long.
The two leaders pulled away from Fernando who was doing all he could to keep Webber behind him but this duo was passed by Button, who had the advantage of being on the soft tyres at this point, while the hards, with which Fernando ended up doing almost half the race, clearly did not suit the Ferrari. When it came to the final stops, Webber got ahead of Fernando by staying out a few laps longer and that is how it ended at the flag. As for Felipe, he seemed to suffer even more than his team-mate on the hard tyres, survived a spin, but gradually slid out of the points zone, before having to park the car at the side of the track with six laps to go. At the end of the 66 laps, only completed by the top four, with the rest of the field being lapped, the two Mercedes came home behind Fernando with Schumacher sixth and Rosberg seventh, with Heidfeld, Perez and Kobayashi taking the remaining points.
If one has a bad race, the best thing to do is go racing again as soon as possible to try and do better.
“There is no denying that being lapped hurts,” Stefano Domenicali, Ferrari Team Director. “It’s even more painful after seeing a driver of Fernando’s calibre putting on such a breathtaking display at the start and then fighting like a lion to keep drivers with clearly faster cars behind him for almost twenty laps. We need to provide him and Felipe with a car with which they can fight all the way to the end of a race and not just in the first part. On a track that favours cars that have a lot of aerodynamic downforce, ours are lacking in this area and that was glaringly obvious, especially on the new hard tyres brought here by Pirelli. We never managed to get this type of tyre to work and our pace was at least two seconds off that of the first four. What to do now? Continue to work on improving the car and finding the aerodynamic downforce that is lacking. We now go into a run of three races which will see the use of the soft and supersoft tyres: we will see what happens and assess the situation at that point.”
Scuderia Ferrari and the other teams will not have long to wait, as everyone will be back on track this coming Thursday for the first day of practice for the sixth round of the championship, the famous Monaco Grand Prix.
2011 Spanish Grand Prix – Results
1. Sebastian VettelGermany Red Bull-Renault 66 laps 1hr 39m 03.301s
2. Lewis HamiltonBritain McLaren-Mercedes +00m 00.6s
3. Jenson ButtonBritain McLaren-Mercedes +00m 35.6s
4. Mark WebberAustraliaRed Bull-Renault +00m 47.9s
5. Fernando AlonsoSpain Ferrari-Ferrari +1 lap
6. Michael SchumacherGermany Mercedes-Mercedes +1 lap
7. Nico RosbergGermany Mercedes-Mercedes +1 lap
8. Nick HeidfeldGermany Renault-Renault +1 lap
9. Sergio PerezMexico Sauber-Ferrari +1 lap
10. Kamui KobayashiJapan Sauber-Ferrari +1 lap
11. Vitaly PetrovRussia Renault-Renault +1 lap
12. Paul di RestaBritain Force India-Mercedes +1 lap
13. Adrian SutilGermany Force India-Mercedes +1 lap
14. Sebastien BuemiSwitzerland Toro Rosso-Ferrari +1 lap
15. Pastor MaldonadoVenezuela Williams-Cosworth +1 lap
16. Jaime AlguersuariSpain Toro Rosso-Ferrari +2 laps
17. Rubens BarrichelloBrazil Williams-Cosworth +2 laps
18. Jarno TrulliItaly Lotus-Renault +2 laps
19. Timo GlockGermany Virgin-Cosworth +3 laps
20. Jerome d'AmbrosioBelgium Virgin-Cosworth +4 laps
21. Narain KarthikeyanIndia HRT-Cosworth +5 laps
DNF. Felipe MassaBrazil Ferrari-Ferrari 58 laps completed
DNF. Heikki KovalainenFinland Lotus-Renault 48 laps completed
DNF. Vitantonio LiuzziItaly HRT-Cosworth 28 laps completed
Fastest lap:
Lewis HamiltonBritain McLaren-Mercedes 1m 26.727s lap 52
F1 Drivers' Championship 2011 (after race 5 of 19)
POSITION / DRIVER / TEAM / POINTS1 / Sebastian Vettel / Red Bull Racing / 118
2 / Lewis Hamilton / Vodafone McLaren Mercedes / 77
3 / Mark Webber / Red Bull Racing / 67
4 / Jenson Button / Vodafone McLaren Mercedes / 61
5 / Fernando Alonso / Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro / 51
6 / Nico Rosberg / Mercedes GP Petronas F1 Team / 26
7 / Nick Heidfeld / Lotus Renault GP / 25
8 / Felipe Massa / Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro / 24
9 / Vitaly Petrov / Lotus Renault GP / 21
10 / Michael Schumacher / Mercedes GP Petronas F1 Team / 14
11 / Kamui Kobayashi / Sauber F1 Team / 9
12 / Sebastien Buemi / Scuderia Toro Rosso / 6
13 / Sergio Perez / Sauber F1 Team / 2
= / Adrian Sutil / Force India F1 Team / 2
= / Paul di Resta / Force India F1 Team / 2
16 / Jaime Alguersuari / Scuderia Toro Rosso / 0
= / Jarno Trulli / Team Lotus / 0
= / Heikki Kovalainen / Team Lotus / 0
= / Narain Karthikeyan / Hispania Racing F1 Team / 0
= / Vitantonio Liuzzi / Hispania Racing F1 Team / 0
= / Timo Glock / Marussia Virgin Racing / 0
= / Jerome d'Ambrosio / Marussia Virgin Racing / 0
= / Rubens Barrichello / AT&T Williams / 0
= / Pastor Maldonado / AT&T Williams / 0
F1 Constructors' Championship 2011 (after race 5 of 19)
POSITION / TEAM / POINTS1 / Red Bull Racing / 185
2 / Vodafone McLaren Mercedes / 138
3 / Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro / 75
4 / Lotus Renault GP / 46
5 / Mercedes GP Petronas F1 Team / 40
6 / Sauber F1 Team / 11
7 / Scuderia Toro Rosso / 6
8 / Force India F1 Team / 4
9 / Team Lotus / 0
= / Hispania Racing F1 Team / 0
= / Marussia Virgin Racing / 0
= / AT&T Williams / 0
(ends)
For further information, please contact
Kevin Wall
/ Tel: +61 2 8577 8000General Manager, European Automotive Imports / Fax: +61 2 85778069
Official Ferrari importer Australia & New Zealand / E:
Edward Rowe
/ Tel: +61 2 8577 8000Public Relations Manager / Fax: +61 2 8577 8069
European Automotive Imports / Mob: +61 407 913 244
Official Ferrari importer Australia & New Zealand / E:
EUROPEAN AUTOMOTIVE IMPORTS PTY LTD
Street Address: 862 – 874 Elizabeth Street, Waterloo, Sydney, NSW 2017 Australia.
Postal Address: Ateco Automotive, 862 – 874 Elizabeth Street, Waterloo, Sydney, NSW 2017, Australia
A.B.N. 79 115 107 189
EAI Media web site: Australia:
New Zealand:
If this material contained within this releases is not relevant to your purpose you may wish to prevent further deliveries. If so, please hit ‘forward’ on your e-mail, send the e-mail to and place “Remove from Mailing List” in the Subject Line.
Release Number: Ferrari_542
Date of Issue: 18 October 2018. Time of Issue: 06:05:26