Fernando, how are you feeling ahead of this 16th round of the season?
Fernando Alonso: I am feeling calm and confident. Our car should be very competitive in the final three races, and I want to demonstrate it. Of course, Schumacher will be very competitive as well. It should be an interesting weekend…

You only have a two point lead over Schumacher. Does that mean more pressure?
FA: Not really. It doesn’t change my approach at all, for example. When the gap was 25 points before Indianapolis, my ambition was to go for the win, to beat the others and enjoy it. That is always my state of mind. What happened in Monza has been forgotten until the end of the championship. The team is still very focused. There is a fixed programme from Thursday onwards, and there is so much going on that you cannot carry on thinking about the past!

Are there still doubts over the engine’s reliability?
FA: No, there shouldn’t be any problems. The team spent a lot of time working on analysing the problem after Monza, and looking for the technical solutions. Those analyses were confirmed in Jerez, just after the Italian Grand Prix, when we had problems with the same specification. Thanks to that, we have been able to change the parts in question.