Sunday: Alonso happy, Massa expected more at Ferrari

Fernando Alonso – 2nd:

I am happy with how this weekend turned out. It’s true that with Sebastian last, there was an opportunity to close the gap more significantly, but it’s also true that our performance and grid position could have seen us lose points during this Grand Prix. I repeat, they have the fastest car, we have the best team. Everyone fights with the tools at their disposal: we’re not going to make our car the fastest on the grid with a magic wand, but we will counter their performance with the perfection of our team. The simulation placed us somewhere between 4th and 6th and we finished second, so it was once again a perfect race, driving at the maximum from start to finish. It’s true there were an unexpected number of retirements and two periods of neutralization that didn’t really come at the right time for us, but these are things out of our control. We just had to stay focused on our race and that’s what we did.

Now, we are heading to Austin, a new circuit for everyone: we just had a taste in the simulator, but the track will be something else. Hopefully, we can achieve a good result and put on a great show in such an important country as the United States. Tonight, I’ll go to bed thinking of the glass as half full rather than half empty. We must be proud of what we have accomplished, the work of the mechanics on the track and the engineers who tried to improve the car’s settings. I fought from start to finish: first with Maldonado, then Jenson [Button], and towards the end, I tried to catch up with Kimi [Räikkönen]. I couldn’t rest for a single lap. Was it the best race of the year? There are still some left…

Felipe Massa – 7th:

This has been a difficult race for me. I particularly struggled with the soft tires because we had more degradation than expected. On Friday, the long runs seemed much better: we need to understand what changed compared to two days ago. I had balance issues: understeer in fast corners and oversteer in slow ones. The duel with Webber was a crucial moment, as I lost several places at a key point in the race. He tried to pass on the outside and we touched. Then he cut the chicane and came back onto the track, forcing me to spin to avoid him. It’s a shame, because I think we could have finished ahead of Kobayashi.

In any case, I managed to score some points that are important for the constructors’ championship, as we increased our lead over McLaren. For the next race, I will also have the technical updates that Fernando had here, and we hope there will be additional ones to improve the car’s performance. However, it is true that the characteristics of the track can alter the balance of power: here we saw that McLaren and Lotus were very strong, in addition to Red Bull of course, but it’s not certain that it will be the same elsewhere.