The Ferrari F1 Team has expressed their regret at not pitting Fernando Alonso after his first lap incident.
The Spaniard touched the back of Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull RB9 at the second corner and despite the pit crew being ready chose to stay out on track with a broken front wing.
The wonky wing was dragging along the track when it broke and went under the Ferrari F138 at the start of lap two. With no steering and very limited braking the double world champion fortunately avoided collecting anyone else.
In a post race press briefing the team said "on the pit wall, the thinking was to leave him out for a lap or two longer to deal with the damage, in order to change the front wing at the same time as the switch to slicks, which was imminent."
Obviously reflecting on the race, Technical Director Pat Fry realised the risk was one that was not worth taking but one that they took anyway. He said "with hindsight, we can say the risk wasn't worthwhile, the car still seemed to be competitive and we decided to run the risk of staying out. We definitely could have played safe and called him in, but that way we would have ended up behind everyone on the rain tyres and would have lost even more ground with the next stop to fit dry tyres."
The eventual decision lost the team a potential 25 point victory haul, the Spaniard lined up third but jumped team-mate Massa at the first turn and looked to be challenging Vettel for first. Of course the relative pace of the Ferrari can only be shown by that of Felipe Massa's lap times which were some way off the front runners.
Alonso shared his insight into the incident, saying he was confused and surprised by the heavy braking of Vettel and that he was merely "unlucky."
He said "after making a good start, I touched with Vettel at the second corner: it was a surprise to find him there, almost stopped and I don't know what speed he was doing."
"Despite the fact the car was damaged, it didn't seem to be too bad and, together with the team, we decided to keep going, because if we'd stopped immediately and then again on lap 3 or 4 to fit dry tyres, we would have dropped too far back and definitely lost the chance to finish up the front. It's easy to criticise this decision, but at the time it seemed like the right one."
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| (c) Sky Sports F1 |
The wonky wing was dragging along the track when it broke and went under the Ferrari F138 at the start of lap two. With no steering and very limited braking the double world champion fortunately avoided collecting anyone else.
In a post race press briefing the team said "on the pit wall, the thinking was to leave him out for a lap or two longer to deal with the damage, in order to change the front wing at the same time as the switch to slicks, which was imminent."
Obviously reflecting on the race, Technical Director Pat Fry realised the risk was one that was not worth taking but one that they took anyway. He said "with hindsight, we can say the risk wasn't worthwhile, the car still seemed to be competitive and we decided to run the risk of staying out. We definitely could have played safe and called him in, but that way we would have ended up behind everyone on the rain tyres and would have lost even more ground with the next stop to fit dry tyres."
The eventual decision lost the team a potential 25 point victory haul, the Spaniard lined up third but jumped team-mate Massa at the first turn and looked to be challenging Vettel for first. Of course the relative pace of the Ferrari can only be shown by that of Felipe Massa's lap times which were some way off the front runners.
Alonso shared his insight into the incident, saying he was confused and surprised by the heavy braking of Vettel and that he was merely "unlucky."
He said "after making a good start, I touched with Vettel at the second corner: it was a surprise to find him there, almost stopped and I don't know what speed he was doing."
"Despite the fact the car was damaged, it didn't seem to be too bad and, together with the team, we decided to keep going, because if we'd stopped immediately and then again on lap 3 or 4 to fit dry tyres, we would have dropped too far back and definitely lost the chance to finish up the front. It's easy to criticise this decision, but at the time it seemed like the right one."
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