Fernando Alonso believes Ferrari will be on the pace of Red Bull in the next races at the Hockenheimring and Hungaroring.

Speaking during a live video chat on Ferrari.com he said:

Red Bull have been very strong in the first part of the season. But we can’t forget Silverstone is a special track with very special corners – in 2009 also Red Bull dominated in Silverstone. So I think we did very good improvement on our car. I think we are very close to Red Bull now in terms of performance. Hopefully we can see that at a normal track like Germany or Hungary and we can fight for pole position with them there. I think the advantage they had in Silverstone wasn’t just at the entry or exit of the corner, it was a little bit everywhere.

Fernando Alonso

He explained why he ashed his race engineer Andrea Stella not to talk to him at one point during yesterday’s British Grand Prix:

I think the relationship with the race engineer is very special. He is the member of team you spend most time with at the track. This year with my new race engineer Andrea Stella I was very comfortable from day one. He’s a superb engineer. Also he’s a great character. He tells me to perform better and he is a very calm person in stressful moments – in qualifying and the race you always try to calm the driver. It’s very good with Andrea. We talk in races to share as much info as possible. In races it’s a huge help to the driver to have this kind of conversation with your engineer. Yesterday was a difficult race for us. I was disappointed after the penalty we had. I was in fourth which became 18th after the penalty so I lost 14 positions because of the penalty. So [getting into] the points was difficult from that point. I was disappointed. Then Andrea was telling me the gaps between the cars, so at one point I said please no more radio any more, I will try to do the maximum and do as much overtaking as I can and enjoy it as much as possible.

Fernando Alonso

He said his poor start was the result of a clutch problem the team had tried to fix earlier in the weekend:

In general we have been doing very good starts. I only remember one bad start in Australia where I lost a couple of places then in the first corner – I touched with Button and became last, so I was a little bit unlucky in the in first corner with touching two cars. Obviously there was Silverstone but all the rest we started the same or better than the others so generally we’re very happy with the starts. We need to understand for sure the Silverstone problem. We had some clutch problems in the weekend: Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I think we know the reason but it will take some time to analyse it and do good starts consistently.

Fernando Alonso

However he thinks the testing ban has made it harder to conduct development during the season and was especially unfair to Ferrari as the team has its own test track:

Definitely I think the testing ban is not the perfect thing when you are behind and have to recover some gap to the other teams. It hurts more to Ferrari because we have some superb facilities in Maranello. We have the Fiorano circuit and we cannot test the F1 car on it. So it’s sad to see that but it’s the way it is. So we need to be better than others in other aspects such as simulation. We have the tools and facilities here to be the best team without testing.

Fernando Alonso

Although he’s not concerned with next season yet, he welcomes the return of KERS – as long as all the teams are able to run it:

I’m not thinking much about 2011! We are fully concentrated on 2010. But overall I think KERS is a good thing to have because it is something new in F1, a green technology that I think has to arrive in F1. In 2009 I was not very sure that the KERS worked because there was some teams with it and some without it. But in 2011 if we have all teams with KERS I think we can enjoy the situation.

Fernando Alonso

2010 British Grand Prix

