Sunday, March 23, 2014

Australia GP : Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen Saturday quotes


Fernando Alonso: "the fifth position in a difficult qualifying session as today, I think it's a good result; as it was the first time that we were driving in the rain with the new car. This position leaves open the possibility of winning the podium and important points.In Q1, we were lucky as it began to rain just after the lap in which I did time, and also in Q2, we were able to join the track as soon as possible. I knew that the results of the free practices will not do reflect the reality of the situation and that the hierarchy would have become clear today, with Mercedes ahead of the rest, and with a clearer picture than that provided by the tests, where we did not know what the other teams were testing. However, we saw in what areas we need to improve ourselves and the objective is to do so in the next races. I do not think that the consumption factor will change things, because all cars are losing half a second when they save fuel. In addition to this, the weather will come into play tomorrow because the forecast is not clear. The priority is to finish the race and do better than others in the coming months. I'm sure that with practice, we will learn how to get the best out of the car and simplifying all the procedures."

Kimi Raikkonen: "qualifications of today have not been easy, especially because of the traffic because when I was on a quick lap, each time I had a car in front of me . This prevented me from a clean lap at the end of Q2 I'm partial head to tail and I damaged the front wing.I do not think that this had an impact because I was going to reduce my speed knowing that I could not access to Q3. It's a shame because we have taken a step forward from yesterday, we were fast on wet track, I had more feeling with the car.We are aware of the work that awaits us in every area, especially on the set-up of the car, but we believe to be in the right direction. Tomorrow will be a tough race, the weather conditions will be changing and more of the new regulations, it is difficult to predict how things will evolve. But this is the first race of the year, we will do our best to get a good result."

Australia GP : the grid

Australia GP : Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen Friday quotes

Fernando Alonso: "there is always a little more stress in the first day of the season with the hope that the work done during the winter is good.Overall it's a good day even if I had a bit of apprehension with these new rules, everything went well. The team did good job and we had no worries.Between the first and second sessions , the track has improved, there were more grip and weather conditions were good.The transition to the soft tyres helped well to improve the time. Performance level, it is impossible to have a clear idea on our competitiveness because as always results on Friday are not representative."

Kimi Raikkonen: "the day was very busy, we weren't able to finish the planned programme but we have collected enough data and this despite a loss of time.However, we have enough to make an overall assessment of the behaviour of the car and tires . There will be a lot of work tonight, especially to understand what has happened and we must try to improve the car before qualifying and the race."

Australia GP : FP2 results

Australia GP : FP1 results