Fernando Alonso: “In the end it went well but we certainly can't continue like this”

The Spanish Ferrari driver and leader of the drivers' standings limits the damage in Singapore with a third place but is aware that if he wants to win the title he must win races.

Fernando Alonso: “In the end it went well but we certainly can't continue like this. It cannot always happen that my closest rival retires, as has happened in the last two races, and we cannot think of continuing until the end of the season by doing qualifying like yesterday's and having a performance that is almost a second away from the best. On the track we manage to bring out the best, making few or no mistakes, thanks to the great work of the team: for this reason I think we deserve to be where we are in the standings. Today we gained points over three of our four main opponents, which is good. This is probably the most difficult circuit for us: we will partially find similar characteristics in Korea and Abu Dhabi but I hope that, when we get there, we will have found something to improve the car. The start was certainly not one of the best of the season but, fortunately, I managed to immediately regain the position on Di Resta. When I made the first stop I immediately found some traffic but I felt that the tires were starting to degrade too much so we chose to make the pit stop. With the Softs we were more competitive but then, after we made the second stop, the safety car arrived, which was favorable to Button and Vettel. Just before the restart, the two leaders were almost touching and I lost a few meters because I was adjusting some settings on the steering wheel. At that point we still didn't know if we would have to stop once more but, when there was the second neutralization and some drivers stopped, we chose to stay on the track, even though we didn't know if we would suffer from tire degradation in the final stages but that wasn't the case and we finished easily on the podium. It was a very tough race from a physical point of view, certainly the most tiring of the entire World Championship: three hundred-odd kilometers in this heat and such high humidity are very stressful.”