Alonso ready to take gamble

Fernando Alonso says he is willing to gamble in changeable weather conditions during the Belgian Grand Prix because Ferrari has little to lose compared to Red Bull.

After Friday practice was heavily affected by rain, Alonso ended the day with the second fastest time. Mark Webber was fastest for championship leader's Red Bull, but the weather made it difficult to gain a clear picture on competitiveness. Alonso said that he didn't have a preference on the weather this weekend, but that Red Bull had more to lose when it came to taking a risk in the wet.

"There are some occasions where you feel good with the car and you feel competitive in dry conditions and you expect a dry weekend with minimum changes possible because you know that if everything is consistent you will be quick and fight for victory," Alonso said." Today for example, or this weekend, we have very little information after today; we don't know who is quick, who is not quick, and who can be advantaged in the case of changeable conditions etc.

"So we are ready to take whatever comes tomorrow in qualy. The race it seems more chance for a dry race but for qualy it's 50:50, so we'll try to be there. For sure changeable conditions is a gamble sometimes, and for the people behind in the championship if we take a risk and maybe things go wrong we don't lose too much because we are already behind. In the case of Red Bull, in the case of changeable conditions if you make a wrong decision maybe the price is higher. So maybe we can be advantaged tomorrow if it's changeable."

Alonso said that the only thing that the team was able to learn was the effectiveness of some new parts, and that it would spend the evening analysing the data before deciding what could be run in the race.

"I think it's the fifth consecutive Friday that we have changeable weather conditions and the rain hit practice again, so not much information for us from the drivers' point of view but sure for the team it's always important. There are always new parts coming at each grand prix so we tried to do some laps with all the new parts and then now the engineers have enough data to check this afternoon and tonight, and tomorrow we'll decide which of the new parts will be on the car and which of the new parts will have to wait for a few more races."

ESPNF1