23/08/2008
NEWS STORY
While the participants in a game of musical chairs wait with great anticipation before the music starts, many team managers and drivers are waiting on one man before the annual game of 'who goes where' gets underway... Fernando Alonso.
However, while the world and his dog speculates on where Alonso might go in 2009, the man himself is in no rush to make a decision, indeed he further confuses the issue by saying that he may well stay at Renault.
"Nothing is happening at all," he said yesterday, when asked about the numerous rumours doing the rounds. "I am not thinking of next year now and will not until the end of the season.
"I am not talking to anyone now at all," he added. "I am fully focused on this year's championship and I am not worried about next year."
Sitting beside him, his team boss, and the man who guided him into F1 and to back-to-back titles, Flavio Briatore, admitted that his team will have to up its game if it is to retain the Spaniard; "we have to give Fernando a winning car," said the Italian. "And that is our aim, to keep Fernando."
Then on course, Fernando's decision may well rest on the future of a certain Finn... and we don't mean Heikki Kovalainen.