Alonso: Ferrari will still be stronger in Bahrain

By Sam Cooper
April 9 2007

After his triumphant race win in Malaysia, Fernando Alonso thinks that rivals Ferrari will have the upper hand in Bahrain, however unfortunately this is not the case, and Fernando belives that McLaren will struggle to beat Ferrari.

The reason why he thinks like that, he is looking back to the pre season testing, where Ferrari dominated, however since then McLaren have drastically improved their car, closing in on the Ferrari’s by almost half a second.

McLaren have also learned a lot from the tyres and how they behave. In my opinion a win is very possible for McLaren in Bahrain, it just depends on how both drivers perform, their body’s will be used to the heat, so that has got to be a definite advantage for everyone.

With just four days separating the races, the teams have to be fast to ship all their equipment to Bahrain in just a few days, the team must pack their stuff up and hurry to the blisteringly hot Kingdom of Bahrain where the next race will take place.

"I think there will not be big changes in the cars between here and there because there are only four days between the races, so the cars will not be developed, so we should again be competitive, but the Ferrari was a little bit quicker than everybody in the test so I still believe it will be very, very hard to beat them again," Alonso warned. "In Malaysia everything went right and we opened a gap in the constructors' championship and we lead in the drivers' so we just need to defend these positions."

"For sure it keeps your motivation very high," Alonso said. "To win a Formula One Grand Prix with two different teams is already something special, I think. For me, it is the same. I have been winning Grands Prix over the last three years with Renault and now switching team, one second-place and first victory in the second race with them is just a dream come true for any driver and I feel proud of this result for all the team."

The teams should be arriving at the circuit at Tuesday or Wednesday this week, armed with valuable testing data from the pre season tests. The next race certainly looks to be a very hard fought one, and hopefully another McLaren win.