Zoom Alonso takes his second win of the season

After finishing first second and third in the 67-lap Japanese Grand Prix, Fernando Alonso, Robert Kubica and Kimi Raikkonen take questions from the media at Fuji Speedway.

Q: (Fréderic Ferret – L’Equipe) Question to Kimi and Robert: you’re still in the battle for the championship, how do you rate your chances?
KR: I don’t even know the points’ situation now. There’s always a chance. It’s not going to be easy but we saw today that the guys in front of us were quite excited. Anything can happen, they can crash again and we could end up in front. But I’m in the worst position out of the four guys. I saw last year that things can go right or wrong, so we keep pushing and trying.

RK: I think you at least have to try, there is nothing to lose; as Kimi says, everything is possible. I think Kimi showed last year that anything is possible. The difference is that I have two guys in front of me, not one and at normal pace it’s no secret that we are not as fast as Massa and Hamilton, so life is a bit more difficult but everything can still happen.

Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) To Robert and Kimi: you had a similar fight in Hockenheim with bad tyres. How hard is it to keep Kimi behind and for Kimi: is Robert the most difficult guy to try to overtake?
KR: I think all of them are more or less similar. Some are a bit more aggressive but it depends a lot on how your car is handling at that stage of the race and on different circuits. Sometimes you have a lot of difficulties and sometimes it’s easier to get past people but I think the differences are not very big and on this kind of circuit, you probably have one or two places to overtake. I couldn’t get close enough, early enough. It was a good fight but I lost it, so next time I try again.

RK: From my point of view it was not so easy but I knew that it was only possible for him to overtake me under braking into the first corner. I was trying to exit the last corner as fast as possible to get as much speed as possible but of course with the tow he was catching me. I had quite a lot of problems with graining, so I was hoping the graining phase would soon finish, so I was also trying to clean the front tyres with quite aggressive driving into the hairpin, just to try to pull out of this graining phase. For four or five laps it was very difficult and then I was able to pull away and that was that.

Q: (Juha Päätalo - Financial Times Deutschland) Robert, you said that your car is probably not as fast as Hamilton’s and Massa’s car but today’s race showed again that everything seems to be possible with these tyres, especially in the second stint when you could easily match Kimi’s pace. Do you think that’s a possibility for you?