On paper, Sebastian Vettel is the overwhelming favourite to seal his third consecutive drivers’ crown this weekend in Brazil.<\/p>\n
His 13-point lead over Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso means he can steer his ultra-competitive Red Bull to just fourth place at Interlagos and still set off for his winter slumber with the title.<\/p>\n
“But Alonso still must win,” Red Bull’s Dr Helmut Marko is quoted by Speed Week.\u00a0 “He must take the risk.\u00a0 That’s the important thing.”<\/p>\n
But it’s not quite as simple as that.\u00a0 First, there is the pressure of the season finale, with Alonso a hardened, never-say-die samurai-loving competitor.<\/p>\n
And Marko acknowledged that Brazil is often a “crazy race”, even without the forecast high probability of rain.<\/p>\n
But the Austrian insisted: “The only question mark is reliability.\u00a0 So no, I’m not relaxed.”<\/p>\n
Marko is undoubtedly referring to Red Bull’s recurring alternator failures in 2012, the latest of which struck Mark Webber’s car in Austin.<\/p>\n
It was believed Renault offered Red Bull a brand new specification of the Magneti Marelli unit for the US grand prix, but in fact the reigning champions opted for the tried-and-tested previous version.<\/p>\n
Spain’s Mundo Deportivo newspaper said Red Bull will definitely use the brand new specification for the Sao Paulo finale.<\/p>\n
“We are ready with the new one,” Renault’s Remi Taffin is quoted by Brazil’s Globo Esporte.<\/p>\n
“Generally we feel more comfortable with something we have known for a long time, but we have tested the new design and so there’s no need to be worried,” he added.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On paper, Sebastian Vettel is the overwhelming favourite to seal his third consecutive drivers’ crown this weekend in Brazil. His 13-point lead over Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso means he can steer his ultra-competitive Red Bull to just fourth place at Interlagos and still set off for his winter slumber with the title. “But Alonso still must …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[1628,5262,149,5340,129,164],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17133"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17134,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17133\/revisions\/17134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}