Fernando Alonso takes aim at Pirelli over not ‘top class’ tyres

Fernando Alonso has hit out at Pirelli and claimed that Formula 1 does not have the right tyres for when it rains.

Interlagos provided a challenge for the drivers with the wet weather making grip a luxury and Alonso has criticised the tyres provided.

Fernando Alonso hits out at Pirelli tyre quality

Since 2011, tyres for F1 have been exclusively provided by Pirelli but the full wet tyres are being used less and less.

While that is partly due to the FIA not wanting to risk crashes, Alonso also suggested that they were simply not good enough for the “top class” category.

“It wasn’t ideal conditions, but we also don’t have the [right] tyres for the top class category of the sport,” he told DAZN.

“When it rains a little bit we always have aquaplaning, there are always accidents…. I think Franco [Colapinto] even behind the safety car… sometimes you can’t even follow the safety car. We have to improve that.”

Brazil was a miserable race for Alonso who has not finished in the top 10 since Singapore. Towards the end of the grand prix, Alonso said over the team radio that he was only persisting with the race to honour the mechanics.

“We had a better car in qualifying and then we had to change parts of the car and go to other components with less performance,” Alonso said.

“In the race we were already going bad again with different floors and other parts that we had already discovered worked worse, but we didn’t have any good spares. We were less fast in the race.

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“We also had problems with the brakes. Lance [Stroll] had it in the formation lap and I had it in all the restarts behind the safety car.

“All the braking was going to the rear of the car and it was like pulling a handbrake.

“The car in the second part of the race had a lot of porpoising. Under normal conditions I wouldn’t have finished the race.

“But I had to do it for the mechanics, for me too because I suffered a bit before I got here, for the people in Valencia who are in much worse situations than the rebound I suffered.”

Alonso’s comments come after Lewis Hamilton bumped into F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali during a live interview at the Brazilian Grand Prix weekend, putting him “on the spot” about the poor quality of the wet tyre preventing qualifying being run in its usual Saturday slot.

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