Although he spent more time answering questions about his cycling team, speaking at today's official press conference Fernando Alonso said he remains fully committed to Ferrari.

"I still have three-and-a-half more years with Ferrari which I intend to respect and hopefully to increase a little bit, and as I said, finish my career in the best team in the world which is Ferrari," said the two-time champion.

"We are not at the moment achieving the results that we want," he continued, "but we are working very hard and next year will be completely new rules which obviously open the door for many teams to stop the domination that Red Bull seems to have had in the last couple of years so we have high hopes also for next year's challenge."

Asked about the rumours linking him with Red Bull, which in turn followed criticism from Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo, Alonso said: "It was only rumours, a lot of rumours. There were rumours about Red Bull, there were rumours in Italy about a sabbatical year, there were so many rumours."

Referring directly to Red Bull, he grinned and added: "It's very good news that Daniel has signed, also for our country because it has opened up a good possibility for Carlos Sainz to join Toro Rosso, so that was the best news for us."

Referring to this week's home race for his team, the last race of the European season, he said: "I'm optimistic. For sure I think in Spa we saw some step forward from us and we hope to continue that direction and keep improving here. The characteristics of the track should help our performance as well. We have everything in place to do a good weekend. We need to deliver when comes the time in Sunday in the race but we arrive with some good confidence and ready to fight.

"I think for us it will be a stronger test at the Singapore race when we come back to the maximum level of downforce etc, and there we will see how much of a step forward we did but let's concentrate on this weekend. Let's try to do the maximum and let's try to finish in front of our main rivals."

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