Fernando Alonso still believes there are several teams that could challenge for a win at this weekend's Australian Grand Prix.
Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari appeared to pick up where they left off in 2010, filling the top spots at the end of the afternoon's practice sessions at Albert Park. But Alonso said he could not yet rule out Mercedes, Williams or Renault ahead of Saturday's qualifying session.
"Nothing new yet and what else would you expect?" he said. "These two free practice sessions have not actually revealed the real relative strengths of the teams: this morning Red Bull went well and in the afternoon it was McLaren's turn, with us and Mercedes always in the mix, while Williams and Renault also seem competitive.
"There are so many teams who could be in with a chance of going for the win and therefore it's obvious that it will be necessary to have a good Saturday, without any mistakes if you want to start from the front row."
Despite completing 48 laps in total on the parkland circuit, Alonso said it was still too early to predict the behaviour of the new Pirelli tyres. Albert Park does not put the same forces through the tyres as Barcelona, where the teams last tested, and Alonso said the teams would have to think quickly to keep up with the circuit's evolution over the weekend.
"Today, we concentrated mainly on analysing the behaviour of the Pirelli tyres, which seems a bit different here to what we saw in testing, partly because the track surface has very different characteristics," he said. "As far as strategy is concerned, we will need to be very flexible during the race, because at the moment, we know too little about the tyres to be able to say with certainty on which lap it will be best to stop. From what we have seen today, maybe we can do ten laps on one set of tyres, or maybe thirty!
He added: "I am happy with the way the car is going: at the start there was a bit of understeer and we still are a way off from having perfect grip at the front, but it went better than I was expecting."
© ESPN EMEA Ltd.
Feeds: ESPNF1 Staff - Feedback
No comments:
Post a Comment