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Question: Does it feel like your home race?
Fernando Alonso: Obviously, good to be here, Barcelona and Valencia, both races feel a home race for me. Racing in Spain is special. As Jaime said, good motivation. There are some extra pressures, but good pressure as there is a lot of support from the grandstands, from the people, hotels, et cetera, so it is a weekend that we normally enjoy a lot.
Question: Nigel Mansell always used to say it was worth an extra half-a-second a lap or so. Maybe a second depending on how he was feeling.
Fernando Alonso: A little bit optimistic that calculation, but you try to do the best you can and the whole team try to support you and have everything ready and try to find perfection in this weekend. So maybe one-tenth.
Question: Only a tenth?
Fernando Alonso: Yes.
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F1 Standings Ahead of Spanish Grand Prix
Question: You have already won this race from pole position in 2006. And three second places here. You have finished eight out of your nine races here. I think what all your compatriots want to know is can you win on Sunday?
Fernando Alonso: Anything can happen in Formula One. Any of us sitting here can win the race. You never know what is going to happen. Red Bull is very dominant in this first part of the championship. It is difficult to beat them in the race. It is nearly impossible to beat them in qualifying, but this is something that we want to change and we want to change starting here in Barcelona. We brought some new parts in Turkey that seemed to work fine for us and we did a step forward and closed the gap a little bit with them. Second part of these new parts are coming here to Barcelona, so hopefully we can make another step forward and close even more the gap but knowing that, as some of the guys said, I think all the teams will bring some new parts. It is just time tomorrow to see, or wait for Saturday afternoon after qualifying, which of the teams did the better job and brought some extra parts here and we see how competitive the Ferrari can be after Barcelona. We are optimistic. We are confident. We have been working a lot and the intention is to close even more the gap and to be fighting with them very soon.
Question: Fernando, we have news that you have extended your contract to 2016 which is quite a long time. But you have also said you will probably end your days at Ferrari?
Fernando Alonso: Yeah, it was good news for me, for my career to extend the contract and to make an extension to 2016. As I also said last year the intention is to finish my career at Ferrari. I don’t imagine any other better place to race for a racing driver. I have been lucky to arrive here last year. I felt at home from day one and now I have this possibility to be racing here. At the end of 2016 it will be seven years in Ferrari, so I feel very privileged, very happy to that, and in 2017 we will see maybe another contract, if I am not too old at that point and if Ferrari are still happy with me.
Question: What does it mean to have that stability and for a driver to know that you are in that team for so many more years?
Fernando Alonso: Well, it is not a big change in my mind or in my head as it was already for me very clear that I would race here for many years. Despite what the number of the contract said, which year it finished, the stability was already 100 per cent in my case and I felt the same with the team. This is just a public confirmation, nothing changed inside the team and stability is always good for a Formula One team. There are so many rule changes, so many things to look at, that for a driver point of view or a team point of view it is good to programme in the long-term to develop and to create a good partnership together and bring some success to Maranello.
Question: Fernando, 2016 is a long time. Whose idea was it to start contract negotiations and extend it now, yours or the team’s?
Fernando Alonso: Both, I have to say. I think it was very easy, very simple for us. We started talking maybe one or two weeks ago, about the future. Both sides wanted to continue. I was very happy with the team; they seemed to be happy with me as well. So we said, OK, we make an extension of the contract. We arrived at the date of 2016 and everything is more clear for us, for the team members and for everyone: to have some stability, as we said. It was a decision from both sides.
Question: It’s got to be the quickest contract negotiation ever, isn’t it?
Fernando Alonso: Yeah, it was very… I think when both sides want to continue, it’s the best thing. You find a compromise, a decision, very, very quickly.
Question: Fernando, in these six seasons until the end of your contract, how many championships would you like to win, at the least?
Fernando Alonso: Formula One is impossible to predict and it’s impossible to think about winning championships before I’ve even started. I think the intention is to keep enjoying racing. For sure, I think I’m in the best team possible to fight for World Championships. I think some other teams go up and down. They have good years and bad years. At Ferrari, in the worst season you finish third or second in the World Championship, so this is something that Ferrari can offer to a driver. So in these six years, I will try to enjoy racing and I’m sure that opportunity will come. Opportunity came last year. We missed it by only four points and hopefully we can repeat that fight and next time, hopefully, we can take it. But it’s impossible to predict.
Question: Last year the Red Bull was about a second a lap faster than anything else around here. This year, the Red Bull has been even quicker compared to the other cars than it was last year at other circuits, so what hope or chance is there of anyone getting anywhere near the Red Bulls this weekend?
Fernando Alonso: You’re talking about his car so maybe he can answer. I think it’s true that the gap was around one second here last year. This year, in some races it was even more than one second but we’re working hard. I think all the teams who are trying to catch them are working hard and that gap should theoretically be less and less at every race. Here, I will be disappointed if it’s one second again. So we try to give them a hard time this weekend.
Question: Fernando, do you consider that Mark plays a key role in the championship because he’s the only one, apart from Sebastian Vettel, who drives a Red Bull and so he could take points out of Sebastian?
Fernando Alonso: I think Mark, for sure, last year was taking some points from Sebastian. That hasn’t happened in these four races. In the numbers, when you see the championship now, you see that Vettel is quite far in front and then a group of six or eight cars, not too far behind one another. It’s only Sebastian who has got a bit too far ahead at the moment and this is also thanks to his fantastic driving in these first four races: no mistakes, very quick and he deserved all those points. So it’s up to us, now, to recover this gap, it’s up to us to have more competitive cars, better cars than Red Bull, so we are working on that and winning races. If we do that - the championship is long - to recover the gap and there are still plenty of races, but to do any reaction or any recovery in terms of points, you need to have the best car. It’s happened in many years, it happened in 2006 to me. I remember I had a gap of 32 points to Michael in Canada, which is more or less 75 or 80 points today, and Michael had the same gap to me with two races to go. So you can catch up any distance, but you need to have the best car in one part of the championship, so we are working on that. And as you said, if it happened like last year that the Red Bull was the quickest car but sometimes Mark was winning, sometimes Sebastian was winning, sometimes they didn’t finish races, sometimes they crashed together and if we can have something like that, it will be even better.
Question: Fernando, you arrived in Turkey saying that you thought the car would be two tenths quicker than it had been before, compared to the others. It turned out to be a lot more than that: you nearly halved the gap to Sebastian in qualifying. Where did that come from and what are you expecting from this weekend?
Fernando Alonso: Well, it came from race pace and from tyre management, I think, because in qualifying, I think in Malaysia it was one second again. In China, it was 1.4s and Turkey was one second behind pole position, so more or less the same distance. But the race pace depends on how is the tyre management you can have in the race, how easy your car is in that particular race, concerning the set-up or whatever you can find on Friday; it helps the Sunday performance, so in Turkey, it seems that we went in the right direction in terms of set-up of the car, in terms of tyres and we were a little bit more competitive than expected in the race. So we would like to bring that experience to these coming races and hopefully we can keep having some advantage in tyre wear and tyre behaviour. And here, I don’t know. We will see how is the performance of the car, how the new parts work but as I said, the most important thing is how you approach the weekend and how you manage your tyres.
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