Fernando Alonso is confident that his move to Ferrari next season will allow him to prove that he is “better than ever” as a driver.
The double world champion has only rarely been able to contend for wins or podiums since his return to Renault in 2008, and admits the uncompetitiveness of this year’s car in particular has been a big disappointment.
However the Spaniard is still regarded as one of Formula 1’s very best drivers, and says he is pleased with his own performance this season, having emphatically beaten his team-mates Nelson Piquet Jr and Romain Grosjean.
“It was a disappointment, because we started the championship with very high hopes,” he said of the 2009 campaign.
“We were thinking to fight for the world championship and very soon we realised that we were not in that position. So it was a frustrating season.
“But overall, you need to take the positive things.
“I am happy with myself and my performance, relative to my team-mates all season.
“I know that people think that I need to beat my team-mate always by rule – but this is not mathematics.
“Formula 1 is always different and I have been beating for two years guys who are winning in GP2 and are champions in different categories.
“It’s not that I am beating someone who arrived in Formula 1 by luck.
“So I am happy with my performance and hopefully next year I can prove that I’m better than ever now.”
Alonso said it would be wrong to conclude from his superiority that Piquet and Grosjean lacked the talent to compete in F1.
Instead he argued they had the misfortune to race for Renault at a time when it was slipping down the pecking order, and claimed that this year’s R29 was now the slowest car on the grid.
“I think they don't [should] suffer, I think they are doing a super job,” he said.
“We have at the moment one of the worst cars on the grid unfortunately – or the worst car now, because Toro Rosso is in front of us, Force India is in front of us, and Williams and Toyota are in front of us.
“So with that case, we do whatever we can and we do our maximum all the time.
“Unfortunately they arrived in Renault at the moment we were not competitive.”
Alonso feels he has had to dig extremely deep to haul the Renault into the top 10 in qualifying so often this season.
“I have been doing some good laps in qualifying and I’ve been putting myself in Q3 in 90 per cent of the races, but they were little miracles every Saturday,” he said.
“If you take apart that, we were not competitive, so they were doing the maximum and a very good job.
“For sure, if they were sitting in a Toyota now like [Kamui] Kobayashi, they might even be able to fight for a podium because they are champions in GP2.”
Despite his low regard for this year’s car, Alonso added that he would be sorry to leave Renault and would be striving to give the team members the best possible parting gift in Abu Dhabi this weekend.
“It’s very important, because it’s the last race and I want to finish on a high for all the people, the mechanics and engineers,” he said.
“I’ve been with them seven years now, so it will be a shame if we do the last race in the middle of the pack, fighting for nothing.
“It will be nice to grab some points, but at the moment we are realistic and we are not in that position.
“So tomorrow (Saturday) we need to find a good four- or five-tenths to be in Q3, so let's hope for that.”
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