Alonso and Vettel Predict Close Early Fight

Last year’s title protagonists, Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel, have predicted a close and open fight for the first few races of the season.

(c) Ferrari

Both agreed that testing proved to be inconclusive and said teams are in the dark about a potential running order. What it did show was that there are potentially five teams vying for the win in Australia, with the midfield pack looking close but some way off the leading teams.

Alonso even thinks up to 10 drivers have a chance of victory in Australia, almost like a lottery. 2012 saw seven different winners in the same number of races, and we could well see something similar in 2013, with teams struggling to work out Pirelli’s new tyres.

Ferrari driver Alonso said “nobody knows who can win this race, we will have to wait and see, and these are questions that winter testing didn’t answer.”

Testing a mix of poor weather conditions, cold temperatures and difficulty with the degradation of the Pirelli rubber which caused this walk into the unknown.

He continued “this year, there is some consistency through the grid and I expect the five top teams to have little advantage, but of those five teams, it is very difficult to say after winter testing which of them will have the extra two or three tenths which could make them win.”

“I think Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, Lotus and Red Bull all showed potential at different times during testing, so it’s hard to choose. It’s very close and difficult to choose one favourite.”

Some suggested that Red Bull still looked fastest in testing, by a couple of tenths. Vettel gave little away about the RB9’s pace during the Thursday Driver Press Conference.

“We don’t really think about what has happened last year; we are here with zero points on our side, the same as everyone else. The cars haven’t really changes and we saw last year that it was very close so I don’t expect it to be very different to last year.

“If anything, it will be a little bit tighter so it will be crucial to make the most of every single race.”

What Vettel said is very true, he won the title last year through consistency and Alonso challenged closely due to this too. The latter looks to have better machinery at his disposal this year though.

Alonso said “It’s not difficult to start better than 2012, but it would be difficult to start worse. It is going to be a very interesting championship; we need to start on the right foot.”

This is something Lewis Hamilton has done with his new team Mercedes. The Brit said it usually takes a while to get comfortable within a new team, and despite needing more time to get settled in it has been a good start

He said “normally when you go to a new team it takes a while to get settled in, but I’m working as hard as I can to get settled in, it just takes time and as time goes on I will get more comfortable.

Hamilton has certainly got comfortable in his new car, the W04. He said “I’m comfortable in the car. We’ve definitely made some good steps forward, but we have a lot of work still to do.”

The “big three” were talking in the Thursday Driver Press Conference, alongside Mark Webber, Daniel Ricciardo and Kimi Raikkonen. To see it in full go here: http://www1.skysports.com/watch/video/8563695/driver-press-conference