- Ferrari
Troubleshooting F14 T must not compromise 2015 - Alonso
Fernando Alonso says Ferrari must not compromise next year's car by chasing problems on the F14 T, as a raft of upgrades for the car arrive in Montreal ahead of this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix.
Ferrari has made a slow start to the season and is a long way off fellow works team Mercedes, which leads both championships by a significant margin. The team is hoping updates on the car in Canada will provide a boost, but with Mercedes likely to extend its championship lead further, Alonso does not want focus being taken away from the 2015 project.
"Whether these updates provide us with the result we want or they don't, we just need to keep working on both sides [2014 and 2015]," he said. "This year we are still fighting for important things, such as second place in the constructors' championship and all the targets that we want to achieve. But we can't do something this year that compromises next year's time for the car.
"We need to keep developing for 2014 because many things we carry on to next year's car, but if there is something fundamental that requires some time in the 2015 project then obviously we need to not take any time from that project. I'm not worried for this because from the arrival of Marco Mattiacci everything is moving in the right direction. He has a good vision, a good approach and a very clever approach. For this year and next year we are just going to be stronger and stronger."
Alonso said Ferrari has been working on the current set of upgrades for some time, but is wary that a small mistake could ruin the team's chances at the high-speed Circuit Gilles Villenueve.
"There are some updates coming to the car that we have been working on for some weeks and we have tested in the simulator quite a lot after Barcelona and Monaco. All this hope we need to see on the track and it's a circuit that we run in 1:15 and 1:16 so it's one of the shortest circuits, so we can expect 15 cars to be within one second. We need to find perfection, because one or two tenths can be six or seven positions and we need to be in front of these six or seven cars.
"It's going to be a tough weekend and the track is again dominated by the power effect, not like Monaco and Barcelona where it was completely different characteristics. It's not going to be easy this weekend, but from the other side I like the track and we have performed well here the last few years with the team so I would like to have a good weekend and good points at the end of the race.
"The podium is a very ambitious target, but obviously we need to be optimistic and believe in ourselves at this stage of the weekend. But we will just go step by step first, get a good practice, try to validate the new package and try to confirm the hopes we have."
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