Fernando Alonso spoke in Hamburg, Germany on Wednesday (July 3rd) about the tyre blow-outs that affected the British Grand Prix last Sunday.
Fernando Alonso (asked if he would considering boycotting the German Grand Prix following tyre blowouts at the British Grand Prix):
“No, I don’t think so. I think…. obviously I don’t want to talk too much about (F1 tyre manufacturer) Pirelli because it’s a Shell event, Shell day, but it’s true that in Silverstone we saw something that we don’t want to see anymore. We nearly have…. accidents that could be much worse than what we saw and we don’t want to repeat that. So, we need to find the solution so…. they (Pirelli) need to find solutions because it’s their problem at the moment and…. here (at the German Grand Prix), I know, or I understand that they will make some changes, so hopefully it’s in a good direction and…. I think we have to race. There must be a solution, for sure, or they should have a solution, and we need to race for our teams, for our sponsors, all the fans that will go to the race track and it’s difficult to imagine they will not improve the situation we saw in Silverstone. For sure, if the situation is still like Silverstone, it’s impossible to race because at the end of the day someone will be killed, driver, marshals, spectators. So in that situation we cannot race anymore.”
On the 2013 F1 title race:
“Well, obviously, will be…. important for us in the next two Grands Prix before the August break to close a little the gap (to Sebastian Vettel at the top of the drivers’ championship standings). It was 36 before Silverstone. It could be 50 after Silverstone without the retirement of Sebastian, so we know we are moving in an…. area that we need to avoid, to go in that kind of number, defecit, but we know we need to do a little bit better. At the moment we are not, performing well enough to finish in front of him, or it’s what we didn’t achieve at Silverstone in normal circumstances. So, we need to, raise our game, we need to do a better job, starting from this weekend, and the plan is to finish in front of him, in the next two races. But it’s a very optimistic plan and we will try to go for it.”
