FI Comes To A Close This Sunday

An article from The Sun UK

Fernando Alonso has started the mind games with title rival Sebastian Vettel by telling the German: “I’ve got nothing to lose”. The Ferrari ace goes into Sunday’s showdown in Sao Paulo trailing the Red Bull ace by 13 points. The two-time world champion managed to deny Vettel the chance of making it a hat-trick of titles in Austin last weekend by finishing third. But while Alonso played it cool in the Texas heat, Vettel showed signs he was cracking under the strain by yelling over his team’s radio when he was overtaken by eventual race-winner Lewis Hamilton. And now Alonso, who has never won here at Interlagos, is remaining coy about his chances of lifting the F1 crown. He said: “In Formula One there’s always pressure but definitely we have less than if we were leading the championship. ”We have nothing really to lose. We are arriving in second position after five qualifying sessions dominated by Red Bull. ”Winning the title looks like a very difficult achievement but if everything goes normally, we should finish second. ”If something else happens, maybe we will win the championship but because it’s not in our hands, the pressure is much less. ”The first priority is to be on the podium, which gives us the possibility to score more than 13 points. We then we need to wait for the results from Red Bull.” ”It was thanks to Ferrari’s controversial tactics which allowed Alonso the chance to take this title fight down to the wire.

The Italian team needlessly opened up his team-mate Felipe Massa’s gearbox in Austin to trigger a five-place grid penalty. That bumped Alonso further up the grid and allowed him to sit on the clean side of the track and, on the first lap he was up to fourth, despite starting in seventh. But Alonso, 31, says if he were to beat Vettel to the title here, then he is adamant his victory would not be tainted. He added: “We’ve seen so many scenes coming from the teams, not only this year but in the past. ”But I’m proud of my team, it was a strategic decision, to start on the clean side with both cars. “Also, fighting for the constructors’ championship is one of the targets that we have. We want to beat McLaren and it worked quite well. “Because it worked quite well, maybe the people were not very happy but I’m proud more than anything because we said the truth when we changed the gearbox. ”Not many teams are able to tell the truth when they make a strategic decision.”