All eyes on Alonso as F1 arrives in Hungary

F1 News
Date: 26/July/2012

Having travelled straight from the German Grand Prix, the F1 paddock reassembled in Budapest on Thursday in preparation for this weekend’s Hungarian round.

Despite an off-the-pace Ferrari at the start of the year, Fernando Alonso approaches round eleven of 20 as the only triple winner of the season so far.

The Spaniard holds a 34-point advantage over Red Bull’s Mark Webber after victory in Germany - meaning that whatever happens in Hungary, Alonso will still be leading the title chase when the summer break ends at Spa on August 31.

Having broken clear at the top, many are starting to talk of Alonso finally claiming his third title - after back-to-back championships for Renault in 2005-2006 - but the Spaniard refuses to be drawn on such speculation.

“We are in a good position, but we are only halfway. There remain another ten important races with the same possibilities for everybody,” he said. “The distance between the top five, top six is not a gap that is impossible to recover. One or two good races and you are up there.

“This year the grid is so tight, in one-tenth you have four or five cars. In the races we are more or less at the same performance, it’s not like last year when there were six cars and then a different group of cars and then a different group again.

“It’s a little bit more stress for all of us. We’ve been lucky in some moments of the Championship and we’ve been finishing all the races in the points, which obviously helps.

“Now we need to keep the concentration and keep maximising what we have in our hands every weekend - sometimes that can be a podium, sometimes maybe it’s a fifth or a seventh.

“But we cannot afford to make any mistakes or anything that we will regret.

“In terms of the Championship it’s obviously way too early to think about and McLaren, Red Bull, Lotus, Mercedes - everyone is still in contention.”

However Alonso did admit that it would be a dream to match the late Ayrton Senna’s title count.

“If it's this year, in two years' time or in six years' time, I don't know but the third one will be very important for me,” he said. “To have the same as Ayrton had - three World Championships - he was idol or my reference when I was in go-karts.

“Some other big names also have three, Lauda etc. So three is a pretty good number which I always dreamt of and hopefully it will arrive sooner rather than later.”

The last driver to win the World Championship for Ferrari was Kimi Raikkonen in 2007. The Finn, who ended a two-year F1 exile by joining Lotus this year, also thinks it’s too close to call at present.

“Fernando is definitely in the best position right now, but like he said you have one or two bad weekends and somebody else suddenly does well in those races and it changes very quickly,” said Raikkonen, who is fourth in this year’s championship with two podiums.

“There are too many races still to go to look into it too much, so we will see what happens.”

The tight and twisty Budapest circuit was the scene of Alonso’s first ever grand prix victory, in 2003. Last weekend at Hockenheim, the 30-year-old took his 30th F1 win.