By Lucifer
October 6 2011

The 2011 season enters the final stages this weekend with the Japanese Grand Prix from Suzuka. Although Ferrari have been strong here in the past it has been seven long years since the champagne flowed in the Ferrari garage. Recent honours have gone to Red Bull Racing, with victories for the previous two years.

Although victory is going to be a difficult achievement, it would appear Fernando Alonso is in no mood to settle for anything less. Although he recently admitted that even finishing second in the WDC may be a struggle, he appears no less determined to get the most from the F150º.

Driver quote - Fernando Alonso.

“I’ve won the Japanese Grand Prix twice; once at Fuji and once here at Suzuka, the latter being the best of the two, but I’m sure no one in my current team would agree with that. I can understand that, because I can appreciate how disappointed they must have been when Michael had to retire while leading ahead of me. It’s always bad to see a car stop with a failure. In fact, the same thing happened to me a few weeks earlier in Monza: Formula One can be a cruel sport at times. Even if it’s true we are no longer even mathematically in the hunt for the drivers’ title, there are still plenty of reasons to retain our motivation to tackle these last five races with the right attitude. First of all there’s second place in the drivers’ table. Given how the season has gone so far, with Vettel totally dominant, failing to get on the podium only once, being runner-up would really be a great result for me and for the team. There are four of us in the running, as I am up against Webber and the two McLaren guys and I reckon we will have to wait until Interlagos to find out who it will go to.”

Driver quote - Felipe Massa.

“Suzuka is a track I really like and it is up there with Spa in terms of enjoyment, mainly because there are a lot of high speed corners which are very challenging and enjoyable when you get it right. There’s a real mix, as there are also some slow corners in the middle section and the Esses after the first corner, where you need a car to change direction very quickly and where you can make up or lose a lot of time. In the second sector you have the slow hairpin and then Spoon which is very interesting. Everyone talks about the 130R, but to be honest since they altered it on safety grounds it has become a bit like Eau Rouge at Spa, because in a Formula One car it is now almost a straight. 2006 was a very good year for me at Suzuka, where I qualified on pole position and finished second: doing that again this coming weekend would be nice, but we have to be realistic about the fact we will be facing the usual tough opponents. As to Ferrari’s chances, we must wait and see until we actually go out on track, because this season we have sometimes been strong on tracks where we had not expected to be competitive and sometimes it was the opposite. By the end of Friday free practice, we should begin to get an idea of our Japanese form. I hope we can be able to fight for the top places, even if, at this point of the season, there is not much more to come in the way of updates in terms of aerodynamics and other developments. While all the drivers like Suzuka, it has often been frustrating to race there, as overtaking is very difficult, but this year with the DRS, KERS and the influence of the Pirelli tires, I expect that situation to change. I believe the plan is to have two DRS zones which will be a big help.“

Hopefully the enthusiasm will continue through the weekend into a positive result for both drivers.Ferrari clearly need as many points as possible in order to have a hope of getting near to Mclaren in the WCC title fight.