Fernando Alonso: “It would be great if my rival was Felipe…”

Fernando Alonso expects another close fight in 2011, and says that Michael Schumacher and Mercedes will be tougher competition than last year.

Alonso is still seeking his third World Championship, having missed out at the final round last year. Logic suggests that he could start this season even stronger than last, having found his feet at Ferrari.

“It would be nice to repeat 2010 – to be able to fight for the championship until the end,” said Fernando at Ferrari’s media gathering in Italy. “I think that it will be possible but we will begin to find out in the winter tests. We are totally focused on preparing in the best way to win both the titles.”

Regarding his likely competition, Alonso said: “It would be great if my rival was Felipe – that would mean we have the best car. I expect that there are at least four teams who will be battling, ourselves, Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes.

“There will be five world champions on the track – and if I had to choose the most dangerous rival I would say Schumacher. He’s a driver who has won the most, he has nothing to prove and he certainly has every capacity to be the strongest.”

Alonso made the intriguing point that this year he’s had more input into the design of the car, which may therefore be even more suited to him than its predecessor.

“When I arrived at the team in 2010 the car was already prepared whereas this year, thanks to the reciprocal relationship between me and the engineers, we’ve been able to try to introduce everything that can be influenced by the driver.

“That includes the cockpit, the controls, the behaviour of the car based on driving style – that will be much more adapted to me compared with last year.”

Alonso also made some interesting comments on last season, and specifically the team’s disastrous strategy call in Abu Dhabi.

“In the second part of the year we made an extraordinary recovery then, at the last race, we didn’t manage to win the title. Certainly after the race you can say that decision was wrong and we should have acted differently. But at the moment that we chose to come into the pits it seemed the right move to us. Now we can stand here and say the degradation of the soft tyres evolved in a surprising manner and that we could have stayed on the track until lap 30 but it’s easy to say that now.

“The truth is that, as I’ve always said, even if they seem predictable words, you win and you lose together. If it’s true that you learn more from defeats than victories it’s also true that for me 2010 was a success. It’s no longer worth thinking about Abu Dhabi: one minute more given to this means a minute less to dedicate to this year’s work.

“At the end of every season you do an assessment: we know that there are areas where we must improve while seeking to keep up our strengths. We lost so many points in the first part of the year and we know that we will have to be perfect from March to November to win. We’ve made some changes inside the team that I’m sure will help improve things – as you have to do in every field, not just sport. I know [new race engineering boss] Pat Fry very well, having worked with him at McLaren, and I think that he can be a big help to us.”