European GP - Alonso: “this year: the best seven races of my career”

Inevitably, as the home grown hero in Spain, Fernando Alonso was called to attend today’s FIA press conference at the track. “The city of Valencia has always been good to me over the years, with the permanent circuit seeing me make my debut in the winter of 2010 with Ferrari and there were other debuts here also in 2005 and 2006,” began the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro driver. “I also remember doing a street demonstration run in an F1 car through the streets of the city in 2007, plus, when I raced in Formula Nissan, it was for a Valencian team. But as for the races on this street circuit, they have not gone so well. In 2008 I had an accident on the first lap with Nakajima and the last two years there were circumstances linked to the appearance of the Safety Car. You need to be competitive and also lucky and in the right place at the right moment if the Safety Car comes out, as was the case in Canada two weeks ago. In all the crazy races you need a bit of luck. I hope we can be competitive this weekend and get an important podium for the team and for me. Hopefully we can put on a good show for the fans. Attendance has not been great here in past years but the circuit organisers have worked hard to get the maximum number of fans here on Sunday. I hope we put on a good show for them.”

As to whether a win was possible this weekend, Fernando was cautious in his response. “At the moment it is difficult to win a race,” he maintained. “No doubt about it, indeed it’s a fact that we could have won in Monaco where I was ten centimetres away from victory and Canada where I was on the front row of the grid. This means the trend is positive and here, the circuit characteristics are similar to Canada and Monaco but we must remember that, at times, we have been one second off the fastest pace in qualifying.”

The Spaniard did not feel that a new modification to the rules which bans changing engine mapping between qualifying and the race will change the order of things very much. “I don’t know if I can get pole just because of mapping changes,” said Fernando. “I don’t think it will change much, because the fastest car and Vettel was sometimes 8 or 9 tenths faster than us even in the race, so we saw a superior dominant car and we cannot underestimate our opponents.”

Alonso is not the sort to ever give up as can be seen from his attitude to the championship situation: “we need to have the best car and then we can win the title because there is plenty of time and plenty of races to recover. But if we are 5th and 6th in qualifying then it will be very difficult. The championship is long, so we need to concentrate on every race and try and be on the podium. Our aim is always to win every race even if this is very difficult but this is the way we are because we are Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro. This is the pressure you have when you are Ferrari – you are expected to win every race and every championship. I think I have driven the best seven races of my career so far this year but now we must continue to respect our rivals while trying to close the gap to them.”