Fernando Alonso discounted suggestions that making a slick tyre stop as rain intensified cost him a chance of victory at Formula 1’s Monaco Grand Prix.
Alonso held a distant second to Max Verstappen in Monaco when rain began to fall across the far end of the circuit two-thirds of the way through the race.
Alonso came in to the pits but switched from Hard to Medium tyres, before re-emerging just as the rain worsened, and both he and Verstappen – who made only one stop – came in the next time around for Intermediates.
It prompted suggestions that, given the slow pace of the lap as rain worsened, Alonso could have vaulted Verstappen had he immediately switched to Intermediates, but this was downplayed by the Spaniard.
“For me, it was very clear that the track on that lap we stopped was completely dry, apart from Turn 7 and 8,” he said. “So how I would put the inters? It was completely dry. 99 per cent of the track. So I stopped for dries.
“The weather forecast, it was a small shower, a small quantity of rain as well what we had as a team.
“And we had a lot of margin behind us to put the dry tires and if necessary the inter tires. Maybe it was extra safe. I don’t know. That minute and a half that it took to go through Turn 5, 6, 7 and 8 again, it changed completely. The out-lap on the dry tires, it was very wet when I got to those corners. The lap that we stopped, it was completely dry.”
Second place nonetheless marked Alonso’s best race result since 2014 after his earlier four podiums of the year were all on the bottom step.
“These are wet races in Formula 1,” he said. “We had a huge margin behind to do two stops if needed, one for the dries and one extra for the inters, and we thought it was the right thing.
“It was a complex race to read, to execute, and we are P2. I know there were a lot of questions in the TV pen as well about fitting the inters and trying to win the race, but honestly, this is a different race to what we saw in the team.
“We are P2. So we are very happy. Very, very happy with the race, because the P1 was very fast today, in any tire, any condition, Max was always 15 or 20 seconds in front of us. So there was no chance to win today.”
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