China win gives Alonso a boost
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E-mail Xinhua, April 14, 2013
Fernando Alonso's confidence has been boosted after claiming a comfortable first victory of the season for Ferrari at the China Grand Prix on Sunday.
The Spaniard, starting from the third position of the grid, took the lead early in the race from Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, who started from the pole, and slowly eased away from the pack, coming across the finishing line in one hour 36 minutes and 26.945 seconds, 10.1 seconds ahead of a close battle for the second place between three other drivers.
"It was a fantastic race for us from the start to the end without any big problems from the car," he said. "The tyre degradation was better than expected so we managed the pace."
"It feels great after the retirement in Malaysia because we had some pressure to finish the race. The two races we have finished this year (Australia and China), one was in second place and the other a victory so definitely the start of this 2013 campaign is looking good and I'm very optimistic," added Alonso.
After Sunday's win, Alonso became the only second F1 driver that has triumphed more than once at the Shanghai International Circuit, with a lap distance of 5.451km, since he had claimed his first China GP victory in 2005. The only other twice winner in the China GP is Briton Hamilton, who won it in 2008 and 2011.
Kimi Raikkonen of Lotus lost places at the start to the two Ferraris in Sunday's race as Hamilton leads the pack away, but the Finn, winner of March's season opener in Australia, came home second, with just 2.1 seconds ahead of Hamilton, who also finished on podium.
Defending world champion Sebastian Vettel was narrowly held off to the fourth place by just 0.2 second across the line. The German driver, who claimed this year's second round victory for Red Bull two weeks ago in Malaysia's Sepang International Circuit, recorded the race's fastest lap with 1:36.808, but his Renauld RB9 just seemed lacking straight-line speed, even with the DRS.
Sunday's result leaves Vettel leading the championship by just three points from Raikkonen, nine points from Alonso and twelve from Hamilton.
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