Fernando Alonso reiterated today that he will need a lot of luck to get back into the World Championship fight – but added that both he and Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo have drawn inspiration from the comeback of the victorious USA team in the America’s Cup.
“The president and me, we still think that anything can happen,” said Alonso. “We saw the America’s Cup, with the Oracle team, it was 1-8 and then 9-8 at the end. We know it’s difficult, but you have two lucky races or whatever and things can change very quickly. We need a lot of luck, we know that.
“We have to be realistic knowing that we don’t have the pace to beat them in normal conditions. We need to have some luck, not only here, but all six races probably. If we have the luck I think everybody has to be sure that we will be there to take it, because we will not give up until mathematically it’s impossible.”
Asked if wet weather could help this weekend, he said: “We’ll see. You never know in wet races who will be the lucky one in that situation. If they are very fast as they should be and we have a normal weekend maybe they will be in pole position and they will win the race, if there are some mixed conditions maybe we are lucky, maybe we are unlucky, and we say bye-bye to the championship. It’s hard to predict, but we will see.”
Meanwhile Alonso admitted the last six races will be tough, especially if he does fall out of championship contention.
“It will be stressful, it will be not easy to handle, I think. The time difference, the travelling… Hopefully the motivation will be high. In case you have not any more possibilities to fight for the championship it will be even harder, because there is not a huge motivation to do so many travels and things. So we have to be relaxed, we have to prepare really well the weeks that we have in between the Grands Prix to relax to the maximum, adapt to the time zones, and approach these Grands Prix at 100% physically and mentally. At the moment we are OK, but we know that every race the batteries will be lower and lower, and we need to avoid that.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Don’t get me going on the America’s Cup! As an American I was stunned to learn the only thing “American” about Team USA was the owner’s cash! All crewmen but one were either Aussies or Kiwi’s, or some other nationality I may have missed.
To come back by winning 8 straight in any sport is a remarkable achievement but me thinks Fernando is really reaching, or sucking up to Luca as a job security ploy.