Saturday: Alonso pleasantly surprised by the performance of his Ferrari at Spa

Fernando Alonso (No. 14) – 6th and 4th

The Spaniard is happy to start from the second row of the grid at Spa and praises the performance of his Ferrari despite the difficult conditions to manage: « I think today’s qualifying session went well, even though it wasn’t easy, because every time you went out on track, you didn’t know what to expect and what grip you would find on the track. 4th place is a good result, and I think we can look forward to a very interesting race. We tried different aerodynamic setups and, if we seem more competitive, maybe it’s because we managed to adapt better than other teams. The rain seemed to help as well, but we had a good pace on long runs in the dry yesterday as well. »

For tomorrow’s race, Alonso believes that the right choice of tires will be an important factor since drivers and teams will have the option for dry compounds, not having used them during qualifying: « Tomorrow, whatever the conditions, we simply need to try to have a perfect race and above all make the right tire choices. We have all the new sets available and, of the two compounds, I think the softs will be the ones to use at the start and in the early part of the race. The mediums are a bit slower, but similar to the softs in terms of degradation, so it will be a matter of using them as little as possible during the race and making the change at the right time. »

Kimi Räikkönen (No. 7) – 4th and 8th

The Finn hasn’t had a simple weekend so far, but he keeps fighting: « After many unforeseen incidents on Friday, this morning I was quite happy with the behavior of my car. In the afternoon, the arrival of the rain made things more unpredictable, the car was sliding everywhere and doing a good lap wasn’t easy. In my last stint in Q3, I did my best, but several mistakes cost me places. »

The Ferrari driver would have liked to do better in qualifying but is now turning to the race where he hopes to take advantage of every opportunity that comes his way: « Even though I’m disappointed, I now want to focus on tomorrow’s race, which will be long, with the chance of variable weather. I will try to gain as many positions as possible, and to achieve that, it will be important to make the right decisions at the right time. »