Fernando Alonso says that even if he should lose the world championship at the final hurdle this weekend, he will still feel great satisfaction when looking back on his 2010 season.
The double champion leads the points heading into the Abu Dhabi decider, having come back from a seemingly impossible mid-season position, when he was 47 points adrift.
He said that given the turnaround Ferrari had achieved - and how much better this year had been than both his previous two seasons with Renault and Ferrari's miserable 2009 - he didn't necessarily need a title win to be happy with his campaign.
"Obviously you feel sad probably if you lose at the last moment, but in my case I will not have anything really to be disappointed about from 2010," said Alonso.
"For the last two years I was fighting to be in Q3 most of the time.
"Ferrari had a tough year in 2009 as well.
"So in this first year of our relationship, to put ourselves in the fight for the championship until the last race, against two Red Bulls who had by far dominated the season in terms of speed, overall it doesn't matter what happens on Sunday - I will have great memories of 2010."
He denied a suggestion that his ample experience of past title fights could give him a crucial edge amid the pressure of the four-way decider.
"It's true that for four of the last six years I've been fighting for the world championship at the last race, so this feeling is not new," Alonso admitted.
"But as I've said, I think I'd prefer a new front wing in this race - a little bit of extra performance - than all this experience I've got."
A first or second place finish for Alonso would make him champion regardless of where anyone else finishes, so he said his sole focus was on achieving that result and not worrying about the permutations of where the Red Bulls finished or if they employed team orders.
"There's nothing we can do other than try to finish second or first in the race," he said.
"I think I will not use even one second of my energy this weekend thinking about what is going to happen on Sunday at the moment.
"There is much more to do on Friday and Saturday, preparing in the right way.
"Our only target for the race is winning the race or finishing second - and I think we can achieve that this weekend."
The Spaniard is confident Ferrari will give him a car competitive enough to fight for the top two places, even though Red Bull has had the edge on pace for most of the year.
"I think we don't have the corner speed of Red Bull and maybe we don't have the straightline speed of McLaren," Alonso conceded.
"But that's been more or less the [story of the] season for us - we're not the best in the corners or on the straights, but generally we are competitive and we adapt to any circuit in a good way, so I'm feeling relatively confident about the performance of the car."
He added that he would be delighted if his team-mate Felipe Massa, who has had an up and down season, could join him up front in this critical race.
"If we are both on the podium that will be a huge help for me because we will take a lot of points, so a perfect weekend for Felipe or even him winning the race will be an absolute present," said Alonso.
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