By role
April 29 2003

Fernando Alonso is looking forward to this weekend at his home Grand Prix. Expectations are high and this year the Montmeló Circuit will be packed with fans to support the Spanish Driver. And he is indeed willing to give his best:

"It means a lot to me to know that people around the circuit are concentrating on me, and I always get great support from the crowd in Barcelona. Obviously, I am a professional, and my motivation is high for every race: it doesn’t matter what circuit I go to, I am always performing to my maximum and that is what is important, to always be pushing for more. But even so, I think that every driver tries to do a little bit more for their home race, and it is no different for me: a good result here this weekend would be very special indeed. To be honest, I haven’t done that many races at Barcelona, but we always used it for lots of testing in the junior categories in Spain. I actually won a race there in Formula Nissan in 1999, and had a good race with Minardi in 2001."

Renault was quite competitive in Australia, Malaysia and Brazil, but less so in Imola who despite all was able to achieve 6th position only behind drivers from the top 3 teams. How does he expect to do at Barcelona?

"I don’t think we can be completely sure about how competitive we will be: the first few races were quite surprising in terms of performance, since we performed well at some tracks where we didn’t expect to, and had problems at others. I think we can expect a good weekend though, because the most important thing at Barcelona is always aero performance, and we have already seen that we are quite strong in that area."

Fernando believes that the driver means quite a lot at the Barcelona track:

"It is definitely what you would call a driver’s circuit, with all types of corners: a good mixture of high speed and low speed, and some of them are pretty difficult to get absolutely right. The driver is definitely a big part of getting a good lap time because the quick corners need good commitment and confidence in the car. From that point of view, I enjoy the demands on the driver: we are always being tested one hundred percent over the lap."