Alonso: Third in a difficult weekend is a fantastic result in terms of points

23 September, 2012

Third placed Fernando Alonso celebrates on the podium

Sep.23 (FIA) Fernando Alonso continues to astound with his ability to turn relatively lowly grid starting slots into podium finishes and at the Singapore Grand Prix he again delivered for Ferrari and their countless fans. From fifth on the grid he crossed the line to take third place at Marina Bay Street Circuit and heads to the next round at Suzuka with a handy 29 points lead.

You have won twice here in Singapor and now on the podium again. It must be one of your favourite tracks?
Fernando Alonso: Of course, it is one of the best tracks to drive, to enjoy. The weekend in general is out of our normal routine, let’s say, of times etcetera. We enjoy driving here, the atmosphere is fantastic, the layout is quite interesting and it was a fun race again.

You still have a 29 point lead in the championship but yet you haven’t won since Germany. Are all of your opponents  falling away or tripping over themselves?
FA: Well, in Monza it was Lewis winning the race and Sebastian retired. Here it’s Sebastian winning, Lewis retiring, so for me it’s OK if they keep doing it like this.

For you was this pretty much the best you could hope for?
FA: Yes, definitely. I think we were not very competitive this weekend so we struggled a little with the pace of the car and yesterday we managed to put a good lap in Q3 and that was a little bit the best part of the weekend. Because if you start at the rear I think you are having problems all the race, so starting in fifth, it was OK. Then the start was so-so. We lost position with di Resta and then we recovered in first and second corner, and then we fight a little bit with Maldonado so I think the safety car arrive in the worst moment for us because we have stopped and changed the tyres five laps before the safety car, so we didn’t have the pitstop for free like the others did. So, it was, I think with all these difficulties, if we put altogether, arriving third in our difficult weekend is for sure a fantastic result in terms of points.

And in terms of your rivals obviously with Lewis not finishing…
FA: Yes, again I think it’s a very positive weekend. A very good weekend. Of the four or five contenders, we lost points with one, with the other three we increased our advantage, so obviously, as I said, when we are not quick enough to win more points against three of our opponents, I think it’s positive.

In the second stint you were consistently catching up to the leaders; what was different in that stint compared to qualifying and the other parts of the race?
FA: I don’t know. I think we were pushing a little bit harder and we were in free air. In the first stint we were fighting a little bit with Pastor and then we were probably a little bit more competitive with the soft tyre compared to the super soft, so maybe that was the reason.

Maybe your first stop was a little bit early; one or two laps more, for the traffic?
FA: I don’t know. We more or less stopped when we felt that the tyres were dropping off too much and we didn’t want to lose too much time. So we stopped. We found some traffic there and we struggled to overtake. After that, we had good pace so maybe…I don’t know. It’s difficult to…or it’s easy to see after the race. I was happy with the pit stop call.

Subbed by AJN.

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