Fernando Alonso has been crunching some numbers and has pointed out that while he has scored fewer points in the first four races of 2011 than in 2010, he is actually ahead when the same four events are compared.
Last year Bahrain (where he won) was among the first four races, and this year Turkey was. He’s also stressed that while he is now 52 points behind the leader, last year he was 47 behind with only eight races to go and still nearly won the title.
“You know I like playing with numbers,” he said on the Ferrari website. “And as I travelled backwards and forwards between home, Maranello and Turkey, I made a comparison between my first four races of last year and those of this year in the corresponding grands prix. What came out of this little game was that compared to 2010 I’m eight points short (49 versus 41).
“But in the same four races, this year I’ve brought home 13 more points compared to last year (41 versus 28). It’s true that my current gap to the top of the drivers’ championship is much greater (52 points) compared to what I had after Shanghai 2010 (11 points) but I well recall that after Silverstone we were 47 points away and we only had eight races left. Today we still have 15 grands prix to come.
“This shows that you can look at the same thing in two different, even completely opposite ways. What matters are results and we’ve started to make the podium: we must do that regularly and if so I’m convinced that we will again be able to fight for the title.”
Alonso said that Ferrari was due the podium he earned in Turkey.
“It was about time because we’d missed out on finishing a race in the top three for too long, but what was especially important was to fight for the top places until the end. That already happened in China with Felipe and in the two previous races we were also close to the podium. Finally we have now achieved what we were capable of.
“Third place was also important for the morale of the team. We were all unhappy with a start to the season that did not live up to expectations and we know how much good it does to see that the efforts expended every day are paying off. But we certainly can’t be happy with a third place and what matters most is that we must be much more competitive in qualifying.
“If we always start from the third row or lower it’s a struggle to fight for the podium. We have a lot of irons in the fire and we hope that as early as next week in Barcelona we will have new parts that allow us to take an important step forward in qualifying as well.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Is there any surprise, the paddock insiders vote him as “Best F1 driver” year after year. Playing the numbers game, the art that Michael introduced in F1, Alonso has perfected it to the tee.
a) Don’t race on track
b) work with pitwall to outwit competition on strategy
c) deliver the strategy to the tee.
repeat a), b) and c) consistently and you get a perfect modern F1 driver.
I do not know if playing with numbers are funniere if they are bigger. But surely I would prefere only to be 11 point behind the leader after 4 races. No matter how much you like numbers…..
What he says is true, however you also need to consider other numbers, such as how many points Red Bull left on the track last year due to mishaps and technical issues, four races into the season the only trouble they’ve had is with KERS, and tyre strategy. For sure, if anyone can catch up its Fernando, but he’s going to have to get past Lewis Hamilton, Mark Webber and Jensen Button first.