Fernando Alonso-“Ferrari Wasn’t Competitive”

Fernando Alonso, who will be racing for the last time in Abu Dhabi, criticized the change in rules and said that it has forced the creativity out o the sport. “The rules change went in the wrong direction because now the teams have very little room to play and to use creativity into strategies or anything like that,” said Fernando Alonso, in an exclusive interview with ESPN.

“There is fixed fuel for everyone, a fixed fuel flow to put in the engine that is the same for everyone. The same tyres for everyone, the same weight distribution for everyone. The same tyre pressure, mandatory for everyone, the same camber for everyone”, said Alonso. “In a way it helped the less talented people.”

Alonso also went on to say that the simulators, were already providing all the information required, and that the actual race was not much different than that in the simulation. “They train a lot in the simulator, they arrive to the new circuits knowing exactly where are the bumps, where are the kerbs that you can take, where are the difficult spots and then into the race, normally there is only one optimum way to arrive to the end”, said Alonso.

“It’s all about how to save the energy, the tyres, whatever that the engineers tell you to do, you just follow that instruction, you have a little bit of room for instinct in different parts of the race but normally it’s less optimum if you try to do it yourself”, he said, emphasizing on the lack of creativity.“I think when we didn’t have all that information it was more you and the car on a Sunday afternoon and I think it was more about driver input”, said Alonso. He also spoke on his decision to leave F1 at the end of the season. “Not really (any regrets),” Alonso said. “Obviously if you know the results in advance you maybe do things differently. But I had to go to Ferrari in 2009, I had this opportunity and everyone wants to go to Ferrari. Ferrari wasn’t competitive but I still had good fun, I was still fighting for a lot of championships until the last race”, says the Spaniard.“And then in 2015 the McLaren-Honda combination was attractive and everyone was agreed here in the paddock it could be a success, so I joined that project with a lot of hopes and a lot of commitment and I think we didn’t succeed. But we’re still doing a decent job in recovering and never giving up. From 2009 when I left Renault, Renault never won a championship from that moment so it’s not that Renault is dominating the sport. When I left Ferrari in 2014, they never won a championship from that moment so it’s not they are dominating the sport. Every step I did, I didn’t succeed but also the team I left didn’t succeed”, Fernando Alonso added. “I don’t understand the people that think I made the wrong choices constantly because with all of my last choices, they’re still not winning.”