Fernando Alonso: “They love Formula One in Italy, so it’s great to win here”
Sep 10, 2007
McLaren
Q: Fernando, not much luck at Monza in the past, but from pole, you set fastest lap and won the Italian Grand Prix.
Fernando ALONSO: Ah yes, absolutely, a perfect weekend for me. Sometimes everything seems to go in the right direction and you feel good and you need to keep up the momentum. All weekend has been good for me. Sometimes I have started well here in Monza but I always had some problems in the race, and I always missed the victory and the win here so to win here in Monza for the first time is a very very special win.
Q: And it looked like a dominating win for you; what was it like from inside the cockpit, any nasty moments?
FA: No, everything was OK. Maybe just the start was not fantastic, I felt, so I looked in the mirror immediately after the start and I saw Felipe behind me, so for a moment I thought that I would have to defend myself in the first corner so I really braked late, but then in the second corner I saw I think Lewis on the left part, and I was a little bit worried that maybe we could touch each other.
Q: And at the restart Lewis was pretty close to you going into turn one.
FA: Yeah, again that was a little bit difficult because here you take the slipstream very easy and I didn’t know how to avoid that. It’s normal here in Monza. That first safety car didn’t help either because the group was together on lap six or seven and we knew that we had to open up a gap before Kimi’s stop and obviously with seven laps after the safety car the gap was not big enough,.
Q: What does it mean to you personally to win here on Ferrari territory on what is an emotional weekend for McLaren? We saw your team principal Ron Dennis looking quite emotional on the podium.
FA: It’s very special, I think. All the wins are special but over the last two or three years, there are some circuits where I won more than one time or one time, and Monza is one of the circuits where I never won before, so I wanted to achieve that, try to make at least one win on all the circuits and to win in Monza, the first time, with all the people here… maybe they are Ferrari fans, but on top of that they are Formula One fans and they are very emotional. They love Formula One in Italy, so it’s great to win here.
Q: Fernando, not much time to enjoy this race; onto the Belgian Grand Prix next weekend, but the gap between you and Lewis is now down to three points. A big win for the McLaren team here; how do you see that continuing next weekend?
FA: We will see. I think we have to see how the car performs in Belgium. As you said, now there are a lot of changes between one race and the next, as we saw in Turkey. Ferrari were very dominant. In Monza, McLaren is very dominant. So in Belgium, first of all we have to see how the cars perform but for sure the main thing is the championship: try to win Drivers’ and Constructors’ championship and to do that, you need to win races. So approaching the next race, the goal is to win again.
