Fernando Alonso believes Ferrari “should have won” the Singapore Grand Prix despite Lando Norris’ dominant performance.
The Aston Martin driver believes Ferrari should have performed better over the weekend and won around the Marina Bay Circuit.
The Singapore Grand Prix was dominated by McLaren driver Lando Norris. The Briton led every single lap of the race, despite making some mistakes.
Ferrari ended the race with Charles Leclerc in fifth and Carlos Sainz in seventh – a disappointing result for the Maranello team.
The Scuderia looked extremely quick during FP1 and FP2 on Friday. However, Saturday brought issues to both drivers, leading to the pair qualifying ninth and 10th.
The poor qualifying haunted Ferrari as Leclerc was stuck behind Nico Hulkenberg and Alonso in a DRS train for the majority of the race.
Once Leclerc was in free air, the Monegasque’s pace was the fastest on the track, making people question where he would have finished with a better qualifying.
Outperformed AMR24 all weekend
Alonso finished eighth around the Marina Bay Circuit last weekend. The Spaniard believes he outperformed the performance of the AMR24.
The two-time world champion was asked whether he extracted the most out of the AMR24 for his eighth place finish. The 43-year-old replied without hesitation: “Yeah, absolutely.
“Behind the top four teams, just in front of Checo, so normally it’s ninth and 10th available. Finishing eighth is a bit better than our best dreams.
“Good points, but still one lap behind and not great pace, difficult car to drive the whole weekend. So yeah, we were just lucky we got points, but it was possible to be P15 and have the same feeling.
“I think we should [have] be 15th and 16th. We are eighth, two seconds behind a Ferrari. So I don’t know if I can do more.”
Qualifying ruined Ferrari’s hopes
Alonso believes that Norrs’ victory wouldn’t have been so dominant if Leclerc and Sainz qualified higher up the grid. The McLaren driver’s closest rival Max Verstappen had no answer to the Briton’s pace.
However, in free air, Leclerc demonstrated incredible pace. The Monegasque was able to close an over 15-second gap to Lewis Hamilton to overtake the seven-time world champion. The Ferrari driver was close to overtaking George Russell, but ran out of laps.
“The Ferraris were, I mean, they should have won this race, probably. They were the fastest car this weekend,” Alonso said.
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