Alonso: Everyone in the team wants this championship

Fernando Alonso was wearing two hats today in India; the first was his Unicef Ambassador one, as he attended an event to promote the benefits of washing one’s hands with soap to combat disease and the second, his more usual Scuderia Ferrari headwear when he met the media in the team’s hospitality unit at the Buddh Circuit this afternoon. Indeed, the circuit was one of the topics discussed: “This is one of the most challenging tracks and after the first sector, there is no time to breathe, with corner after corner, very high speed ones, so I think we all enjoy this track,” began the Spaniard. “Maybe it will be a bit difficult tomorrow through lack of grip, but as the grip comes by the end of Friday and into Saturday, it is a track we all enjoy driving and I’m really looking forward to the weekend.”

Having lost the lead in the Drivers’ classification two weeks ago in Korea, Fernando is nevertheless in a completely positive frame of mind. “My situation is quite good, you could say it’s the second best situation as we are almost on the same points total as Vettel, with four races to go and there is every possibility open for the championship,” maintained the double world champion. “If we had been offered this situation back in February, we would have signed for it! And again, in July, August or even September, we would have signed. We are in the situation that we plan to fight for the championship all the way to the end. It’s true that in the last few races, Red Bull has been very strong and quick, but we have seen all year that there have been ups and downs for everybody, so we need to improve our situation and our level of competitiveness and try to catch them. As for my motivation, it is better than ever and not just me, the whole team is very motivated, everyone in the team wants this championship. We have struggled all year with our car, especially in the first part of the season and now with four races to go, we are going on full attack for the last month with everyone in the team so focussed.”

Alonso’s current points total was badly affected by two accidents that were entirely out of his control, however, he was sanguine about the possibility of this happening again. “It all depends on the position from which you start,” he maintaned. “If you start from pole, you avoid 99% of the crashes, so we need to improve our Saturday pace and start at the front to avoid these incidents. But there is no specific action one can take to avoid first lap accidents. We have always been very calm, not taking many risks and the retirements were completely out of our hands: it happened to us, but it can happen to the others as well. Usually, over the course of a season, everything balances out.”

As to the title fight with Vettel , Fernando does not believe it is a simple battle of the drivers. “I think it will be a battle of packages: everyone will have his own strong points and weak points,” explained the Spaniard. “At the moment we have seen that Red Bull maybe has the fastest car, especially on Saturday. They will try and make the most of this strong point and we will try to use our strong points. It is a matter of pushing everything to the limits now; the car development, the strategy and the approach to the weekends, but that is no different in fact to what we have been doing all year. We were leading the championship up until Korea thanks to our consistency and through avoiding making mistakes. We have produced sixteen perfect races and now we must produce another four and if we do that, we will be very close to winning the championship.”