Formula 1 | Alonso has a theory about the lack of safety cars

The safety car hasn’t been out on a Sunday for nine races, and Fernando Alonso has an idea why. According to the Aston Martin F1 driver, drivers don’t often go hard in races because modern single-seaters are quicker to drive and less at the limit.

“These cars are not easy to drive, but I think the problem with these cars is also to extract 100%” Alonso said. “If you’re driving at 90%, sometimes you’re faster because you don’t have the car at the limit. You’re not pushing the limits, and that’s where it all falls apart. Sometimes driving at 90% is therefore fast.”

The Spaniard argues that qualifying often gives a more random hierarchy because the cars of this generation and the Pirelli tires sometimes change drastically in performance depending on the conditions and their variations.

“Baku is a very good example. I was 15th in Q1, with Lando’s problem. Otherwise, I started 16th in the Grand Prix and I was not in Q2. Seven minutes later, I got into another gear tires and I was fifth in Q2 I gained 1.1. I drove the same way.”

“I was braking in the same places. It was the same preparation for this lap, but I was able to gain 1.1 seconds. And some of us did the opposite: they were very fast in Q1 and very slow in Q2 , and sometimes we don’t find explanations for when we are fast, when we are slow, and why.”

“If you go into the details and the unlimited number of sensors we have in the car, we can spot the little differences when the car is slow. We put the car in different attitudes, maybe because it doesn’t isn’t happy, and that sort of thing.”

“That’s why sometimes in racing, because we’re all driving at 90%, we have to pay attention to tires, fuel economy, all these things, we don’t see too many problems and we don’t see not too many safety cars or accidents.”

“The cars are happiest when they’re going at that speed. It goes a little bit against the driver’s instinct to put a new tire on, go into qualifying and let the we drive at 110% if possible, but with this car, it’s sometimes something you have to manage.”