F1: Alonso Delighted With Solid Second Place

Formula 1

F1: Alonso Delighted With Solid Second Place

Ferrari driver's 2013 season starts on upbeat note...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted March 17, 2013 Melbourne (AUS)

Fernando Alonso of Spain and Ferrari celebrates on the podium after finishing second during the Australian Formula One Grand Prix at the Albert Park Circuit on March 17, 2013 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo: Getty Images)

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The key to Alonso’s race was an early call on his second stop, which got him ahead of team mate Felipe Massa and Sebastian Vettel.

“It was not an easy race,” said Alonso. “At the beginning, traffic with Sebastian and Felipe, and then traffic with Sutil, some tricky moments. But at the end I’m extremely happy. We had a very difficult start to the season two years ago and last year as well and this year is very different. We feel much more optimistic. The car is responding well, we are competitive so we have a very interesting season ahead of us.”

“At Ferrari, we had a good winter and the car is more or less as we expected. Arriving here and fighting for the podium was the aim of the team and the goal of this winter, to reduce the gap and to arrive at the start of the season with a competitive package. I think the goal was achieved. In the winter the car felt good and the understanding of the car was good so being on the podium here is some kind of job done, let’s say.”

Alonso doesn’t underestimate the opposition.

“Lotus, we saw in winter they were very quick and we saw this weekend they were very quick and very consistent, so they had a fantastic weekend, they deserved victory. And then Red Bull is the quickest car at the moment, first and second in qualifying, first and second in practice, and then in the race they saw a little bit of degradation, but that doesn’t mean that they are not the fastest.

“You always learn some things for sure, but I will talk with the engineers now in the debrief about the competition. When you run close to other cars in the first race, you always discover some weak points of the car and some strong points, and today was a lot of fights, a lot of traffic, a lot of action, let’s say, in the race. And it was pretty clear for us some of the strong points of the car and some of the weak points that obviously we will keep between us.”

Adam Cooper notched up his 28th season as a racing journalist in 2012. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.

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