F1: Alonso Qualifies Only Eighth, Will Start Seventh

Formula 1

F1: Alonso Qualifies Only Eighth, Will Start Seventh

Fernando Alonso will move up a spot to seventh on Brazilian GP grid due to a penalty on Pastor Maldonado...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted November 24, 2012 Sao Paulo (BRA)

Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel will settle the World Championship on Sunday. (Image: SPEED)

Fernando Alonso will start the Brazilian GP from seventh place, three spots behind title rival Sebastian Vettel, after moving up a spot due a grid penalty on Pastor Maldonado.

Spaniard Alonso was keen to point out that he reached the podium from similar positions in the last two races

“Nothing surprising,” he said. “We started seventh in Abu Dhabi, ninth in the USA [before the penalties], and eighth here [before the Maldonado penalty], so more or less the same. We’ll try to repeat the performance on Sunday and try to achieve the podiums we achieved in Abu Dhabi and Austin starting in those positions.

“So, an interesting race. Obviously, we need some strange circumstances, we need a chaotic race in a way, with rain affecting it or something. Let’s hope we see something like that.

“Maybe the rain can help, but you never know. We need to push the maximum to enjoy tomorrow’s race and, as I said, try to be in the podium.”

He played down the significance of any move toward a wet setup: “Nothing changes in our days. I think F1 now is dominated by aerodynamics. The only thing you can change is you can put more downforce or less downforce on the car.

“We ran with maximum downforce in the dry, and obviously it’s the same in the wet, so no big changes, or no one jumped today for a wet setup, because there’s minimum changes.”

Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.