Fernando Alonso believes his gamble to start on the medium compound tyre could see him take a ‘random’ victory in India, but he says it depends on how the soft tyre fares.
The Spaniard starts a lowly eighth, but importantly chose to qualify on the more durable but slower compound which should give him and rival Mark Webber – who also opted for the medium tyres – a strategic advantage.
The soft tyres aren’t expected to last more than ten laps at a steady pace, giving hope to Ferrari that Alonso could be in with the chance of winning if he can have a clean race.
“It will depend how the soft tyres behave but I think so,” he said when asked if he can win on Sunday.
“If we have the pace and the car is responding well like it did in qualifying with a good performance, the soft has some problems, people start pitting and going in to heavy traffic then maybe the race win will be between Webber and me. If the soft tyres are lasting longer than expected and they go much longer on the first stint, it will be difficult to recover places.
“So it’s not in our hands, it’s not in the strategy’s hands, it’s in the coin because nobody knows how the soft tyres will behave. On Friday I did 15 or 16 laps on the soft tyres – not in a very good pace but I did some laps – and this morning I did three. So I think set to set it depends; it’s a random tyre and you need to be lucky with the set you put on tomorrow.”
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