Following the depths of despair he endured with retirement in Belgium, Fernando Alonso was relieved to be back on winning form in Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix. As well as being his third victory of the year, Alonso’s success at Ferrari’s home race crucially pulled him back into contention for the 2010 drivers’ championship.
Alonso has been buoyed by the fact that Ferrari have scored more points over the last four Grands Prix than any other team, despite the varied nature of the different circuits they have visited, and the F10’s flexibility has left the double world champion hopeful he could yet bag a third title this season.
“Despite Spa, where the accident on the first lap weighed heavily like a stone, Ferrari and I have scored more points than anyone else in these last four races,” he told his official Ferrari blog. “That makes us even more confident and the fact these results came on tracks with very different characteristics to one another, confirms that our car is pretty versatile.”
After his Monza victory, Alonso found time to stop in at Ferrari’s Maranello factory to personally thank the team and show off his winning trophy. He had previously visited the week before the race and had felt boosted by their fighting spirit.
“I had arrived in Maranello, confident that we could reignite our championship chances, even if I felt it would be very tough,” he continued. “At Spa, things had not gone well, so it was hard to say beforehand what we might really be capable of. However, we knew that, as long as we did our best, we would be in with a chance and that’s how things turned out. Now, we can claim to have made a good step forward.”
As well as spending some time with his engineers discussing the updates for the forthcoming Singapore Grand Prix, Alonso sampled Korea’s Yeongam circuit for the first time on the team’s simulator. He’ll return home to Spain before flying out to Singapore for next weekend’s race.
formula1.com
