- Singapore GP - Race
Alonso: I couldn't get close enough to Ricciardo
Fernando Alonso says his tyres made it impossible to get close enough to attack Daniel Ricciardo after he settled for fourth at the Singapore Grand Prix.
Alonso used the mid-race safety car to pit and take on fresh prime tyres with a view to going until the end of the race, dropping him from second to fourth behind Sebastian Vettel and Ricciardo, who soon both decided to match Alonso's strategy of staying out. Alonso was on fresher tyres than the Red Bulls but only by a handful of laps each, meaning his advantage over Ricciardo was not enough to pass despite closing up the gap in the final laps
"At the beginning we were thinking it was hard to go to the end with one set of tyres, so we took care of the tyres after the safety car for a couple of laps," Alonso said. "But then when we understood the Red Bulls were not pitting anymore, from about 12 laps until the end, we tried to attack. I closed the gap to Ricciardo but the hard [option] tyres had less grip.
"I had fresher tyres than Red Bull but in the end I had just four laps less than Ricciardo. When Hamilton came out of the pits he had new tyres against 25-lap old tyres of Vettel. I had 21-lap old tyres, Ricciardo had 24-lap tyres, it was not a big enough difference to attack."
Hamilton's victory came off the back of a reverse strategy to the three men behind him; staying out during the safety car period on the super-soft, building a lead and then passing Vettel after his pit stop on fresh soft rubber. Alonso says Ferrari's pace disadvantage means this was never an option for him.
"I don't think so," he said when asked if that was the difference between fourth and a podium finish. "The strategy was good because we do not have the pace of Hamilton, so if we stayed out we would not have pulled the same gap out. We would have finished seventh or eighth and would have stayed there. If you have the pace of Hamilton staying out there probably paid off."
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