Alonso: We gifted it to Red Bull

Date published : 04 Apr 2010 - 14:50:48

Fernando Alonso described the Malaysian Grand Prix as a 'gift' for Red Bull, and is confident that Ferrari could have challenged the dominant Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber had it not made a mess of qualifying yesterday.Ferrari was one of several leading teams that misjudged the weather on Saturday, with Alonso and team-mate Felipe Massa missing the more favourable conditions at the start of Q1 as they expected the rain to ease rather than increase.That left Alonso only 18th on the grid, and although he made it through to ninth, he lost that position with a last gasp engine failure.The result means that Massa leads the championship by two points over Alonso and Vettel - the latter having controlled today's race from the outset."Today, we gave Red Bull a little gift," said Alonso."If we had qualified in a normal fashion then we would certainly have given them a hard time."The double champion had to grapple with a severe gearbox problem throughout the Sepang race."My race was an uphill climb from the start," Alonso said."I found I had a problem with the gearbox right from the start and I had to drive without a clutch for practically the whole race."Trying to look on the positive side, at least the engine failure only cost me two points: it would have been much worse if I had been in the lead!"Alonso ran until lap 36 on his first set of tyres, a strategy designed to cope with changing weather."Seeing what happened in the previous days, it made sense to expect rain and so we made the first stint as long as possible, but unfortunately, it did not happen," he explained.The Spaniard is confident Ferrari will bounce back in China."Given everything that happened, we can be proud of what we managed to do in the race and we can look forward with confidence to the next grand prix, which we will be trying to win," he said.