28/09/2007
NEWS STORY
Ahead of this weekend's all-important Japanese GP, Fernando Alonso has called on his team to pull together for the sake of the championship, while dismissing fears that his rivalry with teammate Lewis Hamilton could lead to disaster.
"Winning a World Championship is a job that is done by everybody," he told reporters this morning, "from the first to the last mechanic, not only here in the track but also in the factory.
"We are lucky that we are in front of the championship and we are fighting to win the championship," continued. "If we win or if we lose, it will be everybody's job."
While teammate Hamilton is still smarting from the incident on the first lap at Spa, claiming that he wants to speak to the Spaniard about it, Alonso is confident that everything is under control, and that there will be no on track clashes.
"Again, I think it's not very important," he said of Hamilton's comments. "Spa is gone and we will talk about this weekend. We'll talk about this circuit and the low grip of the circuit, so it's a very normal relationship and very good.
"In Spa we didn't crash," he added, "and I think we will never crash into the other one. We are fighting for the world championship but at the same time we are intelligent people and we try to finish the races. In any incident you don't know if you'll be the one to stop in turn one, so we cannot have that risk. We all want to win, but we all want to cross the line at the end of the race so this will not happen."
The World Champion also rejected claims that he and team boss are no longer talking.
"That was not true," he said. "Again, that is not very important. What is important is to try to win races and try to win everything."