Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso says he still believes he can win the title despite trailing Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel going into the final two races. Alonso gained only three points on Vettel in Abu Dhabi. The Red Bull driver started from the pit lane to finish third, one place behind Alonso.
“I’m confident,” said the Spaniard – 10 points adrift of Vettel with 50 still available. “We will fight to the end. “We are not fast enough, this is true and we know this.”
After a topsy-turvy season, Red Bull have moved their car on to another performance level since the Singapore Grand Prix at the end of September. Before Abu Dhabi, Vettel won consecutive races in Singapore, Japan, Korea and India, and the Red Bull was the fastest car again in the race in Abu Dhabi. Vettel started from the pit lane after being excluded from qualifying because there was not enough fuel in his car for the requisite one-litre sample. The Ferrari, meanwhile, continues to struggle for pace in qualifying and while it is more competitive in the race it is still not as fast as the Red Bull.
Alonso said: “It’s a weak point, the performance that we have at the moment in our package, but we have some strong points which we will try to use.”
After India, the Spaniard said he was “100% confident” of winning the title, a position from which he rowed back a little after Abu Dhabi.
“We have two important races. We will try to finish in front of Sebastian,” he said. “We know that maybe with pure pace we cannot do it; we need to use other points.” Alonso believes Ferrari have the best team in terms of strategy and operation and he is hoping this will give him an advantage.
