Fernando Alonso has predicted the season will start to get interesting in the coming races, as teams begin to introduce developments to their cars.
The Aston Martin driver has been fighting Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari for podium places this season, as his teams leapt up the pecking order to compete for a front row start.
Despite this newfound success, securing three consecutive podium finishes for the first time since 2013, Alonso is focused on the rest of the season, as he targets a victory and maybe even a shot at the Drivers’ Championship.
While normally the first few races would come thick and fast, the cancellation of the Chinese Grand Prix for the third year in a row means that teams have a four week break to hone the development of their cars.
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With the additional break, teams are expected to bring forward significant upgrade packages at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, early than previously anticipated.
As teams start to bring forward new performance-boosting parts, Alonso expects to see the grid get even closer together, potentially setting up a three- or four-way fight for P1.
“It seems that qualifying is quite important now, because race pace is very similar, and I think now we enter into a part of the season that is going to be very interesting: which team is developing the car faster?” Alonso told Motorsport.com
“I think the first three races being away from Europe, it’s difficult to bring upgrades and things like that.
“But from now on, maybe we see the level of the teams changing a little bit, race-by-race, depending on who brings an upgrade that is good enough.
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“It’s all happy days at the moment. We never expected to be on the podium, maybe even throughout the season, and in three races we have three. So, everything that comes now is a plus.
“We take every opportunity and we need to learn and we need to grow as a team also maybe now off-track because we are racing against Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari – teams that are used to this kind of pace of development and things like that,” he added.
McLaren is set to be the one to watch at Baku after a tough start to the season, with the Papaya team introducing new aerodynamic parts to hopefully keep the car in the top ten after Australia’s double points finish.