GB GP - Race weekend recap - Alonso

Fernando Alonso put his Ferrari on pole position for Sunday's British Grand Prix and dedicated the result to fellow Spaniard Maria de Villota, who earlier this week suffered a devastating facial injury which resulted in her losing her right eye.

“First of all I want to dedicate this pole to Maria de Villota, who is going through a particularly difficult time. We are all feeling sad these days and our thoughts are with her and her family. the Spaniard told formula1.com.

After he had made his dedication he went on to talk about how much of a surprise the result was.

With limited running on Friday due to the poor weather the Ferrari had begun to show its true pace on Friday morning during Free Practice 3.

Alonso's time of 1minute 32.167s was the fastest of the morning and it was a good indication of how well his Ferrari was running. But with a wet qualifying, which was even hampered by a red flag session delaying the end of Q2, the Spaniard believed his pole time which was almost 20 seconds slower than his time in practice was helped by luck.

Pole was a surprise, because in conditions like these, you never know what can happen. This morning, in the dry, the car was very good, but in the wet it could all be different, even if the F2012 has shown that’s it’s not bad in the rain, if one thinks of Malaysia and the Mugello test. This afternoon, one had to be in the right place at the right time on the right tyres and, to succeed in that, you also needed a bit of luck.

Starting alongside Red Bull's Mark Webber, the start of the race and the end of the race would focus on these two drivers.

As the lights went out the Ferrari pulled out immediately across the path of the Red Bull, cutting across to the right hand side of the track, in a show of quick reactions Webber then immediately pulled out to the left hand side of the track with replays showing just how close the two came to touching. It was an inspired move by Alonso which saw him enter the first corner still in the lead.

The Ferrari stayed up front during the first two tyre stints, but during the final section of the Grand Prix, Webber closed in and with the aid of DRS he managed to pull off a great manoeuvre around the outside to snatch the win away from Alonso.

“When you do almost the entire race in the lead and you are overtaken just a few laps from the finish, it does leave something of a bitter taste in the mouth, but after reflecting for a moment and looking at the classification, then the outcome of this Grand Prix seems very positive. We have continued working on the right road: four podiums in the last five races and the fifth just missed a few laps from the end, is a nice run of results which has allowed me to lead the championship. This is an important moment in the season: it’s not at this time that you win the championship, but one can start to lose it here and we are pleased to have extended our advantage over the majority of our closest rivals.

This result as Alonso stated in his post race analysis leaves the Ferrari driver 13 points clear at the top of the Formula One World Championship.

With McLaren and Lotus not scoring too well, Alonso now holds a 37 point lead over fourth placed Lewis Hamilton and a further 9 points over Kimi Raikkonen.