Fernando Alonso says his focus is totally on gathering points for his World Championship campaign. In Australia the Spaniard recovered brilliantly from his first corner mishap to claim fourth place, keeping his cool despite pressure from Lewis Hamilton.
Afterwards he pointed out that he was happy because sometimes a win could only gain you seven points on a title rival, and on this occasion, he’d got 12 more than Sebastian Vettel.
“I was not ready to attack even if I wanted,” he said in Sepang on Thursday, “because I finished completely my tyres to push very hard to arrive to the group, so there was very little chance to overtake Felipe and to attack Robert as well. So I was happy with fourth.
“It was also the best positions for the team, third and fourth, because we knew that the McLaren and Red Bull was coming very quick to attack us in the last couple of laps, so my job at that time of the race was just to defend our third and fourth position, and not to attack anyone.”
Alonso says it’s all about the race results: “As I said on the winter tests my only goal is to win the championship, my only goal is to score points on Sunday, I’m not to worry about the winter tests, or the Friday or the Saturday afternoon, the glory. I only want the Sunday afternoon points, and I want to be World Champion at the end.
“Every race or every time I go in the car, my head is thinking in November I win a trophy. So I will race with maximum concentration, hopefully with not too many mistakes through the year.
“At the moment the team is giving us a fantastic car, a very [well] performing car in qualifying and in the race, so we took the advantage and we took the opportunity that Red Bull gave us in the first two races, but we know that we need to improve, we know that maybe we are not quick enough to fight or challenge for pole position with the Red Bulls, so we are working on that.”
Alonso said that Ferrari is not in a hurry to copy McLaren’s controversial rear wing innovation: “I don’t know if the top speed of the McLarens in the first two races is coming from the rear wing device, or the efficiency of the car. Maybe they run less downforce. It is very difficult to analyse that.
“Anyway, we are very happy with our car, and in overall performance we’ve been a little bit quicker than the McLarens, in qualy and the race. So there is no need to copy anything at the moment. We’ll keep working in our direction.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the “wing thing” were a completely bogus device that really didn’t do anything? It has the other teams scratching their heads, trying to figure out how to duplicate it.
This is exactly why it was good pay to get rid of Kimi. Now Ferrari have not only a quick driver but an intelligent team player.
So Alonso holding position behind Massa makes him “an intelligent team player”?
Kimi never did that? 🙂 oh, yeah, only a few times, like only a few races before he won his title he settled for 2nd behind Massa as per team orders. The driver driving “only for himself” would have ignored that team order.
I don’t think your comment is very intelligent, John…
I don’t know if you happened to be watching timing and scoring but the 2 fastest guys on the track were Alonso and Hamilton. They were consistenly the fastest cars on the track and I thought he should have had a go at Massa also but much to my suprise he stayed put and didn’t risk the points for the team or complain afterwards. Oh yeah he doesn’t only drive for himself he drives his employer Ferrari who I think pay him well.
Anders: “So Alonso holding position behind Massa makes him “an intelligent team player”?”
It actually served Alonso better in the end. As he was able to position himself on a different line (out of the dirty air) to Massa and defend the Two drives behind exceptionally well. To the point to of them having an accident.
At the first event, Massa went defensive to keep the opponents behind the two Ferrari’s. He had the inside line and a nose up on Alonso and could have shut the door on him if he wanted to. Doing so would have cost the team positions as Alonso would certainly have lost ground, maybe Massa too. So Felipe let him by and settled for second position.
In Australia, near the end of the race, on worn tires, Alonso opted not to tangle with his team mate. In my book that was a good choice. If they started trying to outbrake each other, it would give the pursuers an opportunity to slip past. There’s also the possibility of taking a team mate out.
Alonso is a very smart driver, you don’t see him making bad decisions.