Stefano Domenicali: “It is a very open championship”

Fernando Alonso continues to lead the World Championship after his second place in Silverstone, but Ferrari boss Stefano Domencali says he isn’t taking anything for granted as the championship battle gathers momentum.

Alonso lost out to Mark Webber at Silverstone, but he gained ground on other key rivals, including Sebastian Vettel.

“It’s great to see that Fernando is still leading the championship of drivers,” said Domenicali. “It is from the sporting point of view good to see Lewis losing some points, Sebastian too. But it’s also good to see Felipe having a good performance today, because we have jumped in the classification on the constructors’ side, and now we’re second. And that is very important.

“And if we look at the classification of today with the first four cars in nine seconds it means for sure we have done a step in the right direction from a performance point of view.

“But it is a very open championship. I don’t believe honestly that the others will stay behind, I’m sure that McLaren will fight in order to come back. The others are very close. Today I was impressed by the pace of Lotus, who were very, very quick.”

Regarding Ferrari’s recent surge in form, he said: “I think it’s not a single factor, it’s a lot of things that are all together, and it’s a matter of keeping the right work on the start, the right approach on the reliability, it’s a matter of keeping the development race by race. The Mugello test was important, but after the test every race we brought some other pieces, so it’s really important to keep that as a stream together in all the areas.

“With such a tight competition if you are behind in one area, then it will be a problematic end to the season. I’m happy to see that the people are concentrated on the job, do not care what [criticism] is all around, and stay concentrated. I’m not happy up to the moment when really our car will be the strongest. At the moment we are not for sure, but we are getting very close.”