F1 News
Date:
14/March/2013
Fernando Alonso believes that ten drivers head into this
weekend’s season opening Australian F1 Grand Prix with a realistic chance of challenging
for victory.
Winter testing form has been especially hard to judge and, although
Alonso doesn’t expect a repeat of last year’s seven different winners from the
opening seven races, he feels the top five teams are all in the hunt.
The Ferrari star, runner-up to Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel
in last year’s Championship, said: “This year with the consistency in the rules
I expect the five top teams to have a little advantage and not to have too many
surprises in the first races.
“But from these five top teams I think it’s very difficult
to see from winter testing who has this extra two- or three-tenths that can
make you win.”
So ten drivers have a realistic chance of victory on Sunday?
“I think so,” Alonso confirmed. “Mercedes, McLaren, Lotus,
Ferrari and Red Bull have all shown some potential on different days in testing
and different parts of races last year. It is difficult to choose between
them.”
The Spaniard, 31, insisted that close title defeats in two
of the last three seasons have only made him more motivated to finally add to
the pair of crowns he won with Renault in 2005-2006.
“Well, I feel privileged to fight for the world championship
two times in the last three years,” said Alonso. “Hopefully this year [we can]
change the final result. Maybe this is maybe some extra motivation for me and
the team, to have a happy result at the end.”
Reigning triple Champion Vettel also claimed he won’t be
carrying any baggage from previous seasons.
“If there is a secret I think it’s not to think about what
happened the last three years,” said the 25-year-old German. “The first title
was very, very special. After that I don’t think you have that pressure any
more. You’ve proved you can do it.
“We have zero points at the moment, the same as everyone
else. So everyone has the same opportunities. The cars didn’t really change.
Last year we saw it was very close so I don’t expect it to be any different. If
anything maybe a little bit tighter.”
With Red Bull and Ferrari running unchanged driver line-ups,
the main seat-swap for 2013 has been Lewis Hamilton’s switch from McLaren to
Mercedes.
“I feel comfortable in the car,” said the Englishman, who
made his F1 debut with McLaren at Melbourne in 2007 “I feel we’ve definitely
made some really good steps forward, but we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”
Outside of the car, Hamilton hinted that he has been
enjoying a more relaxed environment compared to previous years. “Just a little
bit more time at home,” he said of the positive benefits brought by the change.
“Training and to spend with family and friends. It’s been good.”
Another former world champion, Kimi Raikkonen, will be
starting his second season with Lotus on Sunday. The Finn, a race winner and
third in the World Championship during last year’s F1 comeback, was typically
reserved in terms of predications.
“We will see after maybe two or three races where we are,”
said the 2007 title winner with Ferrari.
Raikkonen was also one of several drivers to raise the topic
of tyres.
“I think everybody has similar issues with the [2013 spec]
tyres. All winter they wore out very quickly but I thought they had better grip
on one lap than last year. It might be a completely different story here though.”
In other news, the McLaren team, which won last year’s
Australian Grand Prix with Jenson Button, announced that it will spilt from
title sponsor Vodafone at the end of this year. Vodafone joined forces with McLaren
in 2007.
The first official practice session of the 19-round F1
season takes place on Friday morning.
