Scuderia Ferrari
Fernando Alonso has predicted that the Monaco Grand Prix will be an 'endurance' race due to the hard nature of the Pirelli tyres.
For the fourth successive year Pirelli has taken the supersoft and soft tyres to Monte Carlo, but their 2014 compounds are harder than their 2013 counterparts, with several drivers complaining that they are an issue.
"Today’s result encapsulates the state of play this weekend and it’s more or less what we expected, but I don’t think it went badly, because we managed to stay ahead of rivals who have been front runners so far, such as Williams and Force India and, most importantly, we are closer to the Red Bulls," said Alonso, having qualified in fifth position.
"We have made more changes than usual here, because we were suffering with understeer and we had some problems under braking and the car has improved a lot.
"Compared to what we expected, the tyres seem too hard and we are struggling a lot to get them up to temperature. If the race is run in the dry tomorrow, then it will be an endurance race to see who can stay out on track the longest.
"However, if it was to rain, as has been suggested, then just getting to the finish will already be a good result, because as we saw on Thursday from the few laps we did, it’s really on the limit, like sliding around on ice."
Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen was disappointed with sixth on the grid.
"I’m not happy with this qualifying, because even though we worked hard on the set-up, making several changes, my feeling with the car didn’t improve much," he said.
"Right from Thursday I had to fight to find the best solution and the time lost during the second free practice session certainly didn’t help. On top of that, we are not able to make the tyres work well here and in that situation, it’s not easy to put together a good lap, especially on a track where you don’t get a second chance.
"Sixth place is not ideal, but neither is it a disaster and tomorrow we will do our best to get the most out of it all."
