Fernando Alonso: "Finally home"

I'm finally back home! I left for Bahrain on March 8th and remained on the road until yesterday, for what is certainly the longest trip of the season. I'm happy to be back in Europe, especially because the balance of this first part of the season is certainly positive. Despite the regret for the negative outcome of the Sepang race, the fact that I am in second place in the championship with only two points behind the leader who, among other things, is my teammate and who Ferrari is at the top of the Constructors' standings.

In Malaysia we had a very difficult weekend. It's a shame, because we had very high expectations and the level of our performance confirmed to us how legitimate they were. We made a serious error of judgment in qualifying and we paid for it in the race, where we also had reliability problems. It can happen to anyone to have a bad pass and we must learn the lesson so as not to repeat certain mistakes.

I'm not worried about reliability. I believe that what caused the failure of my engine was an episodic event and the team told me that there is no connection either with the problems experienced by Sauber or with those anomalies which had recommended the replacement of the engines on Sunday Bahrain. Performance-wise, we were competitive in Malaysia too. Sepang was a track with different characteristics compared to the previous two and the F10 proved to adapt well to it. We still need to improve in exploiting the tires on the first timed lap but we are doing very well in terms of race pace.

Now we have a week of preparation ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix. It's an opportunity to recharge the batteries for us drivers while the team will work to possibly bring some innovations capable of making the car faster. I believe that the F10 will adapt very well to the characteristics of the Shanghai circuit and there is no reason not to be optimistic. In the next races we will have to always try to get on the podium: by consistently placing in the top three we can be in a good position to fight for the title.