Fernando Alonso believes his drive to fifth place at the German Grand Prix was his best performance of the season.
The Spaniard started from seventh and benefited from the between from Magnussen and Massa. He spent most of the race battling the Red Bull’s of Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo.
Despite today’s result not being his best (Alonso finished third at the Chinese Grand Prix), Alonso is delighted with his performance where he split the two Red Bull’s.
“Fifth place was absolutely the maximum today, I’m very pleased. Austria (where he also finished fifth) was probably the best race so far this season for me, now it’s probably this one because it was quite complex to manage the start, the fuel, the tyres, the changes in strategy, [and] the battles. It was a very complex race to understand and to execute.”
Alonso stated that Ferrari made the correct strategy call despite finishing behind Sebastian Vettel who was behind him earlier in the race.
”We more or less planned to do two stops at the beginning, but in the middle of the race I was asking how the tyres were for everyone else because I really felt like we were struggling to go for two [stops], so we switched to three”
“I’m happy with all the decisions. For the last stint I was saving fuel but I was battling with Ricciardo so I had to decide to give up the position and cross the line or fight with Ricciardo and be on the limit to cross the line. I decided to fight with Ricciardo to be in the position and then try to manage the fuel as well as I could. On the last lap I had to massively save fuel – I was in eighth gear all lap and was lucky the race wasn’t 100m longer.”
