According to Alonso, the big teams will quickly make up for their delay

After his recent statements about the poor form of the Renault R29 in Australia, Fernando Alonso seems to be less worried about the rest of the season. According to a statement to an English daily, the Renault driver believes that the gap between Brawn GP and the major manufacturers will close very quickly.

Fernando Alonso finished 5th in Australia for the first Grand Prix of the season, benefiting from disqualifications and a major collision between Vettel and Kubica in the final laps. Without that, the Spaniard risked not scoring any points. Given the domination of Brawn GP, who secured a one-two finish, Alonso believes that the rest of the season should be more competitive and that the big teams will quickly catch up.

« Ferrari, McLaren, BMW, and Renault are the best teams, and even if they aren’t the top performers at the moment, they will quickly catch up to the competition. » Commented the double world champion of 2005 and 2006. According to him, F1 is easily comparable to football in terms of performance: « It’s only the first race of the season, it’s like the first match of the Spanish football championship. Even if Real Madrid and Barcelona lose their first match, we all know they will be the ones fighting in the end to win the championship. »

Alonso now wants to put pressure on the team currently in the best form, Brawn GP, and is waiting to see if the team will hold up despite the return of the top teams: « I am sure there will be rapid progress from the other teams », he explained. « We have all seen each other’s cars now. So we know what each one has done and we will take the best to move forward. »

Regarding Renault, Alonso reveals that a new version of the R29 should arrive in four major races: « We will have an update for Barcelona, which looks quite good. There will be two or three other new versions during the season, but we also have to think about adapting to the regulation changes for next year. »

« The 2010 regulations are very different. We will no longer have the right to refuel and we want to start designing the new single-seater very soon. It’s not simple, but we need to ensure we remain competitive. »

Sam Mickael, the technical director of Williams, also shares Alonso’s opinion: “Ferrari and McLaren teams in particular have a different development curve from the others. They are not stupid and I think they will soon catch up with the competition. In fact, the championship is very tight. Everything is decided by tenths, not by seconds as we saw in qualifying with the Brawn GP…”