F1: Alonso - No F1 driver wants Hamilton to win

[Rory Phoulorie]

Friday, 17th October 2008

Former double F1 World Champion and Singapore and Japanese Grand Prix winner Fernando Alonso has claimed that every driver on the grid wants Felipe Massa to win the 2008 title, rather than Lewis Hamilton.



Fernando Alonso has redoubled his attack on former McLaren-Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton as the 2008 Formula 1 world title fight closes in � by claiming that �all the drivers want [Felipe] Massa to be champion'.

Following his sensational triumph in the Japanese Grand Prix last weekend � his second successive victory in the latter stages of the campaign � Alonso had suggested that, should the opportunity present itself, he would �help Massa' to lift the laurels.

Whilst insisting in Shanghai this weekend that �sometimes what you read in newspapers is wrong', the Spaniard did admit that he hopes anyone but Hamilton will ultimately prevail.

�When I said this in Fuji what I meant is that now we have a competitive car it seems that we are able to fight sometimes with Ferrari and McLaren,� the former double F1 World Champion elaborated.

�First of all we need to have a competitive, hard car here in Shanghai and Brazil to be fighting with Ferrari and McLaren. If we do that and Felipe wins the race and I can be second or third, I will be happy to help Felipe to take as many points as possible. This is the only approach.

�We can be here forever and you cannot misunderstand what I say, you know. My best relationship is with Robert [Kubica]. I would like to see him winning the championship, but I know this is quite difficult because I think [with] the performance of his car it will be difficult to recover twelve points.

�I will drive my own race, but when you finish the race and see the results, you prefer some drivers to win or some teams to win compared to others. I don't think that I will be a key part of the championship, though.

�Whichever driver wins will win because he won the last two races or did a better job than the other one, that's all. You can take whatever you can from my comment, but it is very simple.�

Replying with an equally simple but perhaps just as telling �no comment' when asked whether he believed Hamilton's driving of late had been, in Kubica's words, �dangerous' and �too much', Alonso subsequently confessed in a separate interview with Spanish broadcaster Telecinco that � in his opinion � no driver on the grand prix grid wanted the Briton to clinch the crown.

�Last year, when the championship was at this stage, everyone said they wanted either me or Kimi [Raikkonen] to win,� the 27-year-old revealed. �This year, all the drivers want Massa to be champion, so I think it is not my problem, it is Hamilton's.�

As to what he can achieve on a personal level in the Chinese Grand Prix, the man from Oviedo � who again shone in Friday practice in Shanghai, winding up second-quickest in FP2, ironically to Hamilton � is confident that Renault's recent resurgence will continue, even if he argued that a third consecutive win to add to his Singapore and Japanese successes may be asking a little too much.

�Hopefully we can do well here,� the 21-time grand prix-winner underlined. �Obviously victory I am still thinking is very far and we are not as quick maybe as the contenders for the win here, but we can do a good job again and take hopefully many points for the team.

�The car has been really nice to drive in the last month-and-a-half, so I don't see any reason that here we will not have a competitive car � as I said maybe not for the win, but hopefully the podium will be our target.

�We have been introducing new parts at every race; some of them have been a little bit better from a performance point-of-view, but some of them were not so good. I think we are still not completely sure how the car has changed dramatically in the last couple of weeks.

�We introduced a new front wing, but I think it is something more than that. You know, little things in the set-up as well, I think, helped us a lot. We found some new ways to set up the car in the last couple of races and it seems to work fine, especially in [terms of] the long run pace in the race, so we will keep this set-up for sure for this race.�

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