Alonso confident of a strong start to 2013 season

Ferrari‘s Fernando Alonso did not mince words when he said that he was confident about his team’s fortunes in the championship battle in 2013. The Spaniard, who played a pivotal role in Ferrari’s resurgence after a tumultuous start to the 2012 season, expressed his desire to challenge for the title this year right from the start.

Talking about the upcoming season in Ferrari’s media event ‘Wrooom 2013′, Alonso candidly said, “We can be faster or slower [than the others] but not 1.5 or two seconds off the pace, because it was a record what we had last year. It is maybe impossible to be worse than last year, so I am confident.”

Alonso would certainly hope that his team learnt from the mistakes of last year. Add this to the newly recruited aerodynamicists of Ferrari and Alonso has every reason to feel confident about the upcoming season.

The Maranello wind tunnel correlation problems that hampered Ferrari’s efforts last year has lead to the shut down of the facility for an upgrade and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne has been used by the team. Alonso believes that this will enable the team to be much better in terms of aerodynamic development.

He said, “An F1 team is extremely complex. Aerodynamics is one of the main components, and the wind tunnel as we have said more than once had some problems during the last season. We had a front wing that would give us two tenths of a second [in the tunnel]. We would keep testing it, bring it to the race track and then it would go even slower. There were times when what we were testing in the tunnel did not correspond to what would happen on the race track. So simply we remained a bit behind in the last few seasons. Starting from 2013, we hope we are the ones who will innovate and we will have good correlation between what we find in the wind tunnel and on the race track.”

Alonso, who began his Ferrari career in 2010, has been unable to deliver his best for the team. His 2010 championship dreams were crushed in the final race at Abu Dhabi due to a strategic error by the team. 2011 turned out to be the worst amongst his three seasons for Ferrari. In 2012, he suffered due to a poor car but somehow managed to challenge for the world championship till the very last race. Alonso revealed that he desires for a good start in 2013 and has confidence on his team.

Alonso was optimistic about his fortunes in 2013 and said that his team would work towards improving the car till the start of the season. He said, “So we have to wait and see the result. From here to Australia there is still plenty of time.”