Alonso blames brake problems!

By role
April 3 2004

Fernando Alonso saw for the second race in a row how his chances to be on the podium flew away after having two offs in his qualifying lap. The Spaniard put the blame on the brakes of is R24.

Alonso will start tomorrow from the 17th place on the grid.

"I had big problems under braking this afternoon. We didn't change anything on the car, but I was locking the front wheels every time I had to brake hard. We know that we can still score points tomorrow, we saw that much in Malaysia, but it won't be easy from that starting position." He said.

The team had to look deep on the telemetry to try to find any possible damage on the brakes.

"Fernando appears to have suffered from a brake problem, which we will work to identify in order to see if it can be corrected under parc fermé rules. We remain confident for tomorrow's race: the Michelin tyres are performing very well, and we believe we have just sufficient margin on our brakes, which will be punished hard at this circuit." Said Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering.