Alonso: ‘Perfection’ needed to score points in Austria

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Fernando Alonso Monaco 2021 PA

Alpine praise Fernando Alonso for his attitude despite difficult start to his F1 return.

Fernando Alonso says the midfield teams are going to need perfect weekends in Austria if they are to score points.

After a slow start to his first season back, the Alpine driver has started to find his feet in recent times, scoring points in both Azerbaijan and France with impressive performances.

In Baku, he ended up finishing all the way in P6 after a late charge through the field, while at Paul Ricard he crossed the line in P8 close behind Pierre Gasly.

He’ll be hoping to keep that streak of top-10 finishes going in Austria for the doubleheader at the Red Bull Ring, but given the nature of the track, is expecting that to be tough for him and his rivals.

“I’m happy, I’m confident that we can do two good weekends here,” the double World Champion said.

“The circuit is very demanding, it’s very short. Within two or three tenths we will see 10 cars, 12 cars, so it’s a track where you must optimise everything, you must make perfection on Saturday and Sunday if you want to score points.

“So it’s what we’ll try, but yeah I’m happy with the last couple of events, a better understanding of the tyres in qualifying and in the race.

“There is always room to improve and we’ll try to keep learning here.”

Pirelli
Pirelli

Check out all the latest Fernando Alonso merchandise on the official Formula 1 store

One of the things that Alonso has struggled with most this season is getting to grips with the Pirelli tyres, and he’s not the only one.

Ferrari suffered extremely high degradation on both of their cars in France and it caused both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz to rapidly drop out of the points.

The Spaniard says such results show what a difficult area it is to get on top of, but is satisfied with the progress that he and his team are making.

“I think there’s still a lot of room to improve from my side,” he added.

“Also from the team’s side because we keep learning about the tyres more and more, and it has been not only for us, we’ve seen some random results from some of our opponents from week to week. So that’s a tricky aspect of the car.

“But yeah, we are confident that we are getting there.”

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