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Alonso upbeat despite McLaren taking charge

After just four of this year’s 19 races in the F1 world championship, the sport’s keenest fans are cooing with satisfaction and revelling in the thrills of an entirely unpredictable season.

The only constant in the season-opening four ‘flyaway’ races outside Europe in Bahrain, Australia, Malaysia and China has been change — changing race winners, dominant teams and weather conditions.

All of which led, in Sunday’s dramatic and rain-hit Chinese Grand Prix, to McLaren taking over on top of the constructors’ championship following Jenson Button’s triumph ahead of teammate Lewis Hamilton.

McLaren now have 109 points to Ferrari’s 90, but nobody is making any predictions.

Two-times world champion Fernando Alonso, who won the Bahrain season-opener on his debut for Ferrari, summed it all up when he said: “I think we all need a normal dry Grand Prix!”

The momentum and the initiative in this year’s title-race has ebbed and flowed already with the fast Red Bull team dominating qualifying and taking four successive pole positions, three to German wunderkind Sebastian Vettel.

But the England-based outfit have failed to make their speed count in the races where Ferrari and McLaren have proved that good teamwork, experience and trusty tacticians on the pit-wall can be more than a match for outright pace.

Button’s victory was his second this year for McLaren since joining from a triumphant title-winning season with Brawn, now morphed into Mercedes.

Mercedes now has two German drivers, Nico Rosberg, 24, and seven-times champion Michael Schumacher, 41, whose comeback has threatened to turn from a mainstream intrigue into a comic sideshow.

While Rosberg came home third, his second podium finish this year, Schumacher struggled to finish 10^th in a style that bore no resemblance to his glory days at Ferrari.

Alonso admitted he was disappointed with himself for jumping the start and then failing to find a way of stamping his authority on a race dominated McLaren.

He started third on the grid and with what appeared at first to be a sublime getaway passed both Red Bulls when the lights went out.

Alas, for him, he did so before the lights had gone down and so the stewards gave him a drive-through penalty.

Two Safety Car periods, plenty of rain and five pit stops later, he finished a fighting fourth to prove how much potential had been wasted.

“I made a serious mistake at the start as my reflexes let me down and I left early. It’s never happened to me before and I am very disappointed with myself,” said Alonso.

“Luckily though, despite the penalty, I managed to finish fourth. In a race like that, anything can happen.”

Asked about his controversial passing move on Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa, when he swept into the pits ahead of him unexpectedly after squeezing ahead at the hairpin, Alonso was unfazed.

“If he was not my team-mate, there wouldn’t be so much talk about it and for me it was a normal move and it definitely won’t compromise our relationship,” he said.

Massa, who finished eighth, said: “I lost some places because of it, as I had to wait for his stop to be finished.”

To many observers it was a clear example of Alonso’s pragmatism on the track, and endorsed a feeling that he can this year fight for a third world title.

“The start of the championship has gone well: we have shown we are competitive on all the tracks and we have what it takes to win the title,” Alonso said.

“We have a great potential and we must hope now we get some normal races like the one in Bahrain. Clearly, we have to up our points tally and improve our qualifying performance.”