Despite leading the second practice in Bahrain, the Asturian assures that he is not thinking about pole position… yet.
Fernando Alonso has lowered expectations after a Friday in Bahrain where he shone with his own light. The Aston Martin driver finished second in Free Practice 1 and led in Free Practice 2, ahead of the Red Bull, and with a wide difference over the Ferrari and Mercedes. Despite the good feelings, Alonso does not see himself in the fight for pole position.
In Aston Martin, a team in which there are people seasoned in a thousand battles in Formula 1 such as Alonso himself, the engineer Dan Fallows, Martin Whitmarsh or Pedro de la Rosa, nobody wants to throw the bells on the fly. Neither that, nor sell smoke in the form of impossible results, as other teams in which Alonso was in the past have already done.
For all these reasons, Aston Martin F1 has kept its feet on the ground despite the positive data from last week’s F1 tests, where it was already seen that the team could be in the upper half of the grid.
On the practice day for the Bahrain Grand Prix, the same thing happened: Alonso led Free Practice 2, was second in Free Practice 1, and his teammate Lance Stroll, despite being injured and having no experience with this car, has been sixth. But not even with those, Alonso wants to talk about great results.
“The feeling with the car is good, but we have to wait and see what happens. At the moment we are not very focused on the times. We still have to improve some things in terms of configuration. Obviously, it is good to see in the times that you are competitive, but at the moment we are focused on ourselves”, says Alonso, according to Motorsport.com.
The Spaniard, who was asked if this car is the best since the Ferrari with which he last fought for the title against Sebastian Vettel in 2012, did not want to make comparisons so soon and reiterated the good work done by the team.
“You can feel really good about the car and then maybe three or four quickest ones, and then you stop feeling so comfortable. I think we have to be proud of the step we’ve taken; it’s been a very intense job, two or three months in the factory at full throttle”, he explains.
“We have spent endless hours in the simulator, in meetings, and we try to anticipate what problems we could have in these first races. The group of people we have is incredible. That is something very motivating for the future,” he says.
As for whether he sees himself fighting for pole position for the Bahrain Grand Prix this Saturday, Alonso denied it despite the good feelings on the track. Above all, the Asturian points out that this project is still too young to think about such important things.
“I don’t think about that, to be honest. Actually, I don’t know what position would be good for us. After the tests, we were thinking about going into Q3 with both cars, scoring as many points as possible and trying not to make mistakes.” says the two-time world champion.
“We have to keep our feet on the ground. The goal has to be to fight for the championship, but in the long term, I don’t think that can happen this year yet,” he concludes.
