The Fast Lane
Ferrari, the racing team for which Fernando Alonso is driving for, has developed the new F138 Formula1 racing car for 2013. Ferrari’s chief Stefano Domenicali has stated that the new F138 car is a huge improvement to the previous racing car and hopes Ferrari is the only team that has made these extensive upgrades to the cars.
Alonso’s racing car of 2012 was by far one of the slowest vehicles of the top four teams. In the opening race of 2012, held in Melbourne Australia, he started eighth on the grid and finished in fifth position. Alonso is a former world champion with lots of experience and knows exactly what the task is at hand, and that is to finish the race and obtain maximum points out of every race.
Due to his many years of experience, he used other methods to get the best performance out of his car, which is achieved by being on the right tyres for permitted weather conditions and to minimise any risks especially at the start of the race.
Due to the different set up in the Ferrari car compared to other racing cars, Alonso’s initial racing time for Ferrari was slower than that of Felipe Massa’s. It was towards mid season 2010 that Alonso got acquainted to the car set up, resulting his racing time to improve and even better Massa’s time.
Alonso is in his fourth year for Ferrari and has established himself as Ferrari’s number one racing driver, compared to Felipe Massa who has been with Ferrari for more than six years.
Alonso was leading the 2012 championships most of the season and it was only towards the last quarter of the season that Sebastian Vettel caught up to him and passed him. However Alonso was involved in two accidents that forced him to retire from those races. One can only speculate that if he had finished those two races he would have won the championship of 2012. The point margin between Alonso and Vettel was so close that the champion was only decided after the final race.
The racing season ended with Sebastian Vettel with 281 points and Alonso second with278 points.
Alonso has set the second fastest lap time in Barcelona for the pre-season testing for 2013. He was 0.3 seconds slower than Nico Rosberg.
It must be stated that there is a huge difference in setting the fastest lap time as to being consistent to that lap time on race day; and that is where Alonso, Mr Consist, is good at.
However, Pat Fry, Ferrari’s technical director has announced that they will be upgrading the F138 racing car before the Australian, Malaysian and Chinese Grand Prix.
Based on Fernando Alonso consistency in 2011 and especially in 2012 and based on all the above information, he would be my favourite to win the 2013 championship.
Source: http://www.wheels24.co.za/FormulaOne/Alonso-heats-up-testing-track-20130222
Image: http://www.largaron.com/noticias.php?articulo_id=10757
TheFastLane 