Ferrari are still chasing their first grand prix win of the season and concede that a lot is resting on this weekend's European GP...
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Fernando Alonso: In a few days, the European Grand Prix weekend gets underway. It's the second race of the season held in Spain and it is an important one for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro and for me, as it presents another opportunity for me to race in front of my fans. To tell the truth, I've never been that lucky in this race since it's been held on the Valencia street circuit, especially last year when, despite having a very competitive car, I finished down in eighth place. However, everyone remembers what happened with the appearance of the Safety Car and there's no point going over it again. I always believe that luck and bad luck balance out by the end of the season and maybe this unwritten rule also applies to race tracks. If that's the case, I would be more than happy if last year's misfortune was paid back now! In fact, it seems that in general so far this season, luck has not come our way: in the race in Montreal, not one damned thing went right.
I know that our fans are eagerly awaiting our first win of the season and I can assure you that the same goes for us. At the last two races, we showed we were clearly capable of winning and, especially in Monaco, we came pretty close, although I believe that even in Canada I could have fought for it all the way to the end, given what we had seen in qualifying. Now we go to a track with reasonably similar characteristics to Montreal and there is no obvious reason why we should not be competitive here too. The 150º Italia will be pretty much in the same configuration seen at the last race and the major new element will be the race debut of the Pirelli Medium compound tyre, running alongside the Soft. Over the winter, I got the chance to test this tyre, but now it will be a completely different ball game, given that the difference in temperature compared to February and March will be of the order of 20 degrees and because the Valencia track characteristics definitely cannot be compared to those of Jerez and Barcelona, nor to the permanent track at Cheste, around twenty kilometres from the city centre. In Montreal, we were able to assess these tyres during the two free practice sessions on Friday, but it's one thing to do a few laps on a track that is not necessarily that well adapted to this type of tyre and quite another to evaluate it in depth with an eye on qualifying and the race.
I feel special ties to the city of Valencia as it has become something of a symbolic place in the history of my relationship with Ferrari. It was in fact in Cheste that I made my first public appearance after having signed my first contract with Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, at the 2009 Ferrari Days event and it was also at this track that I had my first official drive of a Formula 1 Ferrari, on 3 February last year. Well, maybe that means it's time to add another "first" to this story...And actually, I have already won the European Grand Prix twice before, when the race was run at the Nurburgring: as the saying goes, "never two without three..."
Felipe Massa: "I have just arrived in Valencia today, Wednesday, after spending a week at home in Sao Paolo following on from the Canadian Grand Prix that had promised so much but did not deliver the result I was capable of getting. But in a busy Formula 1 season like this one, you don't have long to wait to try again and that is what I plan to do this weekend. The Valencia street circuit has good memories for me, because I had a great start here, winning the very first race held in 2008, having started from pole position. I missed the 2009 event of course and then I was competitive again last year, having a good race until the well documented incident with the Safety Car. So there are plenty of reasons to expect we can have another strong weekend this year and in the very hot conditions predicted for the next few days, the 150º Italia should get the tyres to work well too.
"One of the criticisms of this street circuit was that it turned out to be very difficult to overtake other cars, but this year we have the Downforce Reduction System and, like in Canada, we have two DRS zones where we can operate it. For sure, this will change the characteristics of the race, making it much easier to overtake. However, you have to do everything you can to ensure your car is competitive throughout the whole race, because this is the direction we have seen things go this year, in that if you are not competitive then it is very easy to lose places to other cars. In the past, before DRS, even if your car was slower than the one behind, you could defend your position more easily, keeping the car behind and not getting passed.
"Another interesting factor will be our tyre choice here, because for the first time this season we will be running Pirelli's Medium compound tyre as the Prime, with the Soft, that we know well by now, as the Option. I drove with the Medium in winter testing, but it was much colder then, which means it behaved very differently and a couple of weeks ago, in Montreal, we were given the opportunity to evaluate it quickly during free practice, but the Canadian track surface is very different to the one in Valencia. If I had to sum up the new tyre, I would say it is very much like the original Hard tyre we had from Pirelli earlier this season. After a few races, they changed it, making it harder still and this Medium feels like the original Hard. The Ferrari engineers have been working intensely on adapting the car to suit the tyres, as we have struggled more with the harder end of the compound range and we will test again a modified suspension to try and make it more suited to them.
"We are heading for a very busy part of the season, with a run of four races in five weeks and although Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro has been competitive in the last couple of races, we will soon be heading to Silverstone which is more likely to suit our rivals who have gone better on tracks that require more aerodynamic downforce. However, we have definitely made progress in this area since the last time we were in Spain, at the Barcelona circuit and it will be interesting to see where we stand this weekend: even if Valencia is a street track, sitting somewhere between Monaco and Canada in terms of its characteristics, it still has a final high speed sector which will be an interesting indication of how much progress we have made on our car and we will get the first indications on Friday, in free practice."
