Fernando Alonso was in upbeat mood after finishing fifth in Hungary, and he made it clear that he was delighted to have scored a good helping of points on a track which did not suit Ferrari.
Although he lost ground to some of his rivals he finished three spots ahead of Mark Webber, and he thus actually extended his advantage over the man in second place.
“I finished ahead of Button and ahead of Webber,” said Alonso. “So in the end we did something better than the others in terms of the strategy, in terms of consistency. We managed to lose one position with Vettel, to win some positions with Webber, and increase the lead in the championship. So, a very nice Sunday.”
Alonso nearly got ahead of Vettel at the start, and thereafter had a busy afternoon.
“We were quite close, but it was not possible, not enough. We needed to start on the clean side, maybe the opportunity was better. Overall the race was not easy, we were not quick, we were defending first with Webber, then with Kimi, then with Button.
“So a defending race, but I think in terms of points, a good amount of points again in a difficult weekend, because we were not quick on Friday, not quick in qualifying, not quick on Sunday, and even with that we scored a lot of points today.”
Alonso says that Ferrari has some catching up to do and suggested that Ferrari has some useful updates in the pipeline.
“We need to work. I think we saw today in dry conditions there are three teams in front of us, Lotus, McLaren, Red Bull, it has been like this all season more or less. So we need to close this gap.
I think we have some nice ideas to develop in this coming weeks, and hopefully in Spa and Monza we can introduce them.”
Meanwhile he’s looking forward to the summer break: “I’m happy to relax a little bit, I think we arrive quite tired at the end of July, we had three races in four weeks, a lot of work in the factory, a lot of aeroplanes, hotels, I think we need to have two or three weeks off to relax and come back in September with the batteries full.”
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