Alonso delighted to prove F10 quali pace
Date published : 13 Mar 2010 - 13:53:56
Fernando Alonso was delighted with Ferrari's strong qualifying performance in Bahrain and feels confident the team's F10 car will be equally potent in Sunday's race.Alonso was many people's pick for pole position after topping the final practice session on Saturday morning, but ultimately had to give best in Q3 to Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel and his Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa.Nonetheless the Spaniard was thrilled that the Maranello squad's optimism after an impressive winter testing campaign had proved well-founded.I am very happy obviously, he said.There are many things to answer at the first race after a long winter with such big differences in fuel loads in all the tests and also yesterday in practice, because you never know what the competitors are running.We were really excited about the first qualifying of the season, so now to have both drivers in the top three means that we have a very competitive car.We thought so, but you need to confirm it. It has been a great day and it is a nice feeling to realise that we are in the fight because you never know until qualifying.Having been closely matched through free practice, the leading cars were surprisingly spread out on the final Q3 timesheet, with more than a second covering the top four and over two seconds blanketing the top 10.Alonso reckoned the disparities were attributable to many drivers not managing error-free laps on the extended 3.9-mile Sakhir track as much as differences in the cars' qualifying pace.With such a long lap like this one, and with the very warm temperatures we are facing, it's difficult to complete that long lap with no mistakes or problems, he explained.So I think the times are related to how good the lap was, apart from the competitiveness of the car.In different parts of the weekend we've seen the times very tight and the times a little bit spread out like they are now.While Alonso believes qualifying speed will not necessarily carry over to the race, Ferrari's long-run consistency over the winter has been exemplary and the double world champion thinks his team is in good shape for Sunday's 49-lap encounter.From our point of view we are extremely happy with the result of this weekend so far, he said.The race is tomorrow we cannot forget this but so far everything has been great.We keep going as we did [throughout] winter testing with a very strong car, which I think will be competitive in all conditions, quali and race.To be second and third is a great achievement from everybody in the factory at Maranello and this is a big plus for the team.
