Autosport Plus

Mark Hughes: F1's Inside Line

"'I'm still not understanding the car fully' is not just a lame excuse"

Autosport Magazine May 23, 2007, 2:44 PM

So far this year there have been three drivers - Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Robert Kubica - who have performed less well than expected against their respective team-mates. It's not a coincidence that they are all new to Bridgestone tyres and their team-mates all either have previous Bridgestone experience or, in the case of Lewis Hamilton, no Michelin experience to unlearn.

At Barcelona Alonso spoke a little about his continuing learning process: "After the second race I was thinking that I now understood the tyres and the car. At Malaysia I felt I was driving with more comfort, that I knew what I was doing more. But then we arrived here last week to test and I learned so many more things about the tyres - about their characteristics in the long runs, about their first lap performance, everything.