Fernando Alonso believes that the Belgian GP will be a step “into the unknown” for all teams and drivers given the limited preparation time.
Having qualified ninth the Spaniard is hoping that a higher downforce level than some of Aston Martin’s immediate rivals will prove beneficial in terms of tyre usage during the race, due to less sliding.
Rain on Saturday meant that teams only had Friday to prepare for what is expected to be hot and dry race on Sunday, with a new track surface making it hard to judge how tyres will behave over the full distance.
“We go into the race into the unknown I think for everybody,” said Alonso. “We had a little bit of long runs yesterday, but in this track, being so long the lap, you cannot do more than six or seven laps, because of time restrictions on the sessions.”
“So with the new asphalt, it’s very grippy, but we don’t know exactly the degradation tomorrow.”
“The good thing is that with a wet qualifying, we have all the dry tyres available for everybody, so we should be able to push all the way through.”
Asked who his competition will be in the race he said: “Not the cars in front, unfortunately! But I think we will have to see behind us. It’s going to be a challenging race in terms of tyre degradation, some nice battles for sure.”
“I think we have the Alpines very fast this weekend. We have, I think, Albon as well, very fast. So, yeah, I think that will be our battle.
“They are a little a bit quicker on the straights. We have a little bit more downforce in the car, maybe we take care better on the tyres. So hopefully that comes to us at the end of the race.”
Alonso, who will gain a place on the grid thanks to a PU penalty for Max Verstappen, believes that he couldn’t have done better in qualifying, indicating that it was the best he felt in the car all weekend.
“P9 behind the top four teams probably was the maximum today,” he said. “So happy with that. The car felt good in qualifying. I struggled a little bit the rest of the three practices this weekend. I was never confident in the car. I needed three or four laps to get the rhythm into the session.”
“So finally now in qualifying I was flat out since lap 1, and yeah, that extra confidence, it was very important in these kinds of conditions.”
Regarding the latest updates he added: “We’ve been experimenting with the setup yesterday as well. So yeah, the new upgrades are a little bit more optimised.”
