By role
April 21 2004

Fernando Alonso is looking forward to this weekend's San Marino Grand Prix at Imola, a track that perfectly suits his driving style. The Spaniard has been fighting against his mistake and adversity on the last two official qualifying sessions. Alonso is sure that the previous experience is not going to hold him back come the offical qual on Saturday afternoon:

"Not at all, no: you have to push to the limit on every lap, especially at a circuit like Imola where overtaking is difficult and grid position crucial. We know what happened in the last two races, but that is over now and all I am concentrating on is the race ahead. When I go out for qualifying this weekend, I will be thinking about how to drive my lap, where I can make up time, how to extract maximum performance from the car; I won't be focusing on what happened three weeks beforehand." He said.

Imola is a track that requires a driver to be agrressive and attack the kerbs in order to get the best possible time and Alonso is clear about it:

"Mainly, you need to be very aggressive to get a good lap time: you have to really attack the kerbs with the car in order to be quick. My style is usually quite aggressive, so that suits me well and I have always enjoyed racing at Imola, since I was in F3000. The race itself rewards consistency and you need to be able to get the most out of your car in a few short bursts around the pit-stops to make up positions." He adds.

The Spaniar is aware that renault could have scored more points if not for the qualifying problems and he is sure that they should take advantage of such a good car:

"I think we can be pretty optimistic going to Imola. We haven't performed to our full potential so far, and to be able to say that, when the team is second in the championship, is very positive. I had a strong race at Imola last year, and our performance was encouraging when we tested there in February. In the last race in Bahrain, I set the second-fastest lap, so that gives an idea of how strong the package is in race conditions. If the weekend runs smoothly, then we can expect to fight strongly for the podium." He concluded.