Alonso: I give Villeneuve a 10.

By role
September 27 2004

Spanish driver Fernando Alonso was exhausted after a race in which he had to battle with a nervous car in order to finish 4th on the podium. Alonso had a new teammate in Jacques Villeneuve in their quest to finish second on the WCC.

Unfortunately, Jacques struggled most of the race and finished 11th scoring no points and the gap with BAR has grown to 9 points now.

Alonso thought that things though had gone better than forecasted:

“I knew I had to suffer a lot to be in front of the Williams, of Coulthard and we were even afraid of Toyota. To tell the truth we were not competitive enough and the result is better than expected. Not even the Sauber have given us troubles. Only the fastest cars have finished ahead of me, the ones that were setting best times.” He said. “We did what we had to do. We should not lament to be so close to the podium. Our weekend was quite irregular, with lots of problems with the car. I was not expecting to end sixth on the qual and neither to finish 4th on the race. The five points are like a present”.


Alonso recognized that the Chinese track was one of the worst for the R24:

“It has been one of the worst all year. Monza was also quite bad and in Bahrain I also had to suffer more than expected. We have not been able to find the perfect set up for the car and even if in the race the speed was not all that bad, our pace was not the same as other cars.” He added. “I made one of the best starts of the year. Even my first meters were not that good, but I shifted quite late, took a risk on the first turn and it worked out. Thanks to that I was a bit confident. When Button overtook me I was hoping that he was going on a three stopper, but he was going for two like me and it was not possible to get close to him.”


Renault will have to fight hard in order to regain the second place on the Championship and after the Chinese Grand Prix the gap is even larger:

“The second place is a bit farther away. Now they have a nine-point lead and is a bit harder. But we can change the situation any moment because we have two difficult tracks for the engine and the drivers. I hope that if we work well and we take advantage of the full car’s potential we can do it, though it looks hard.”

Alonso was complimentary of Villeneuve’s effort yesterday despite the Canadian finishing 11th and quite far from the points:

”We have been scoring points with one car for some time now and BAR scores po0ints with both cars. But we have to give time to Villeneuve. He has done a quite good job all weekend. I give him a 10.” He said.

Alonso was quite tired after the race:

“This track is quite hard on the driver, with quite long turns in which the left side of the body suffers quite a lot and the car was behaving badly through most of the race, specially when we filled it up on the pit stop. I suffered quite a lot with the handling and I was afraid of spinning like in Monza.” He added.