Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali has praised Fernando Alonso for keeping faith in his team throughout the year.
Ferrari struggled for pace with the F2012 during pre-season testing and went to the opening races with the aim of damage limitation. However, Alonso now leads the championship by 34 points after winning two of the last three races and Domenicali said his driver's leadership qualities have played a big part in Ferrari's turnaround.
"This year it was important from his side not to lose faith in the team and not to lose the will to believe in what he is doing when we had difficult days at the beginning of the season with a car that was not a car," Domenicali said. "To see him always motivated and focused on the job was really good and that is something that makes the difference when you are under pressure. You know that you have to do a big job to improve the car but if you see that a world champion is pushing in the right way for the team to work, I think that is something fundamental. For that we need to thank him a lot."
Domenicali stressed that Ferrari must continue to improve the car at every round if Alonso is to maintain his advantage over his competitors.
"I believe that we do still not have the fastest car because if we had the fastest car maybe it would be easier to win and we need to improve the car. We need to make sure that our car is good in all the different conditions and on all the tyres. It's such a tight championship and you need to make sure you develop the car race by race, otherwise you will lose points because the competition is so strong. If you think today that the first three cars were split by two or three seconds - it's nothing. Fernando did 67 laps of qualifying so they are very strong."
© ESPN EMEA Ltd.
Feeds: ESPN Staff - Feedback
No comments:
Post a Comment