Alonso: There’s no point getting angry as it does not serve any purpose

Mar.17 (PVM) When Fernando Alonso lifted himself out of the Ferrari F2012 cockpit, after he beached it in Turn 1, his demeanour and body language suggested one extremely angry Spaniard and perhaps at the time he was, but speaking after qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne the double world champion was philosophical about the entire episode.

Alonso explained, “It went like this: I got a bit on the grass under braking, the car took off on its own and I found myself in the gravel. I had managed to keep the engine running and was hoping the marshals would be able to push me back on track. I had done my time on used Softs: maybe with a new set I could have made it through to Q3, but I would not have been able to fight for the front rows."

The F2012, which has been described as a 'complex' car, was a handful and only Alonso's tenacity and determination gave it a sense of credibility, which proved to be false. He conceded, "Today, we lacked performance, especially because we did not have enough aerodynamic downforce and we are still lacking in top speed."

But, as has become his modus operandi since joining the Maranello squad, Alonso is seeing the brighter side, "Tomorrow we will be racing defensively and will try and do what we can, hopefully making the most of having four sets of new tyres. Let’s hope for a good start in order to catch those who are a few rows ahead of us and then fight with them to the end. Here, at the end of qualifying last year, we were well off the pace, while today, in Q2 it was less than 1 second”, therefore hypothetically one could say we are more competitive than we were back then."

"Sure, there are other teams that have made progress, but I think we have plenty of room for improvement. In Malaysia, we will have the same car, therefore the situation won’t change much. We will just have to see how it will adapt to the track characteristics there," said the winner of 27 grands prix.

Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali said, “We can only be disappointed after this qualifying session. It hurts to have neither driver on track for the final part of the session, even if we know that Fernando had every chance of getting at least this far if he had not got caught up in one of those incidents that are part of the game."

"The season is going to be very long, just as tomorrow’s race will be long and hard. Given our grid positions, the realistic aim is for us to get both cars into the points. As usual, we will do our utmost," said the Maranello team's chief.

"It’s true [that] our target at the start of the year was to fight for the win right from the beginning and we have not managed that, but this will be a long season and all we can do is work on improving performance... There’s no point getting angry as it does not serve any purpose," concluded Alonso.

Alonso will start the season-opener, his 178th F1 race, from 12th on the grid with a rookie alongside him in the shape of Jean-Eric Vergne in the Ferrari powered Toro Rosso.