Fernando Alonso has sworn he will fight battles with Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa this season – and insists that in this respect they are no different from any other team.
The Renault refugee was speaking to the Guardian in a wide-ranging interview that covered the Spygate scandal, his torrid year at McLaren, and the Crashgate saga in which he was an uncomfortably close onlooker. But it was clear the Asturian was more concerned about the future than the past.
“[With Felipe] I have the same with everybody else,” he said. “After so many years of course I have battled with Felipe. It’s the way it is and we’ll keep having these fights.”
He emphasised that people were concentrating on himself and Massa because they were, in his opinion, in a “good position”.
“Michael Schumacher and [Nico] Rosberg will have fights at Mercedes. I am sure Lewis and Jenson Button will have fights. Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel will have fights at Red Bull in fact they were fighting last year already. But no one talks about this. They talk about it with Ferrari because we are in a good position.”
Alonso also said he had fulfilled a lifetime ambition in driving for Maranello, something his father had spoken about with him.
“My father always told me this would happen,” Alonso said. “He said, ‘If you race for Ferrari then you can retire. Your life is complete.’ So after I won my two championships for Renault I said, ‘I’m happy now my career is complete.’ And he said, ‘No, no, if you drive for Ferrari people will forget the championships. They will remember you as a Ferrari driver.’ I said, ‘OK, Papa, we’ll see.’ Now I think he was right. Ferrari gives you a special feeling.”
