Alonso: We trust Pirelli to solve the problem

The last Grand Prix in England was still very fresh in the minds of everyone, as you would expect after just four days and when Fernando Alonso met the media in the Nurburgring paddock, there were only two topics of conversation. The first was the strange situation of a Prancing Horse car performing below expectations most of the weekend and yet ending on the podium and indeed in sixth place too.

“Mixed feelings,” were the two words the Spaniard used to sum up the mood after the British Grand Prix. “Obviously we said we were happy with closing the points gap to Vettel, but not happy with our performance. It’s something we need to investigate here, to see if Silverstone was a one-off, because we didn’t have the right balance on the car or if it’s because everyone else made more progress and we made a step backwards. Hopefully, this weekend we can return to the form we showed earlier. We went very deep in the analysis of Silverstone, as we were not competitive and we did see some issues with the car in terms of its aerodynamic characteristics and also the set-up. So maybe we can do things better here. In any case, this race and the next one in Hungary will be dominated by the tyres and which cars they suit best. This means we must learn to interpret the new tyres as quickly as possible and get them to work for us and we will be putting a lot of effort into this.”

Which takes us neatly on to topic number 2, the current tyre situation after a handful of cars suffered spectacular and potentially very dangerous blow outs at the high speed Silverstone circuit.

“It was a dangerous situation, but I didn’t think anything special about it at the time,” said Fernando referring to following Perez’s McLaren when the Mexican’s rear tyre exploded. “I commited to overtake Sergio on the right, which was lucky, because if I’d gone to the left maybe the tyre debris would have hit my helmet. Bits of steel travelling at 300 kilometres per hour would be like a bullet or a knife. Now, they have made some changes and we trust Pirelli to solve the problem as they know what they are doing. Let’s wait and see and hopefully we won’t have these problems again as they are not good for the sport. We need to wait and see how it will affect our performance: it’s the third or fourth change they’ve made this season: some have hurt us, some were good for us and that is another question mark for this weekend. However, they have only changed the rears and usually they are less problematic in terms of the warm-up that we can suffer from with the fronts. But today, performance is the second priority. What we need to have is a tyre with which you can finish the race and get home at night.”