This is the case of former Ferrari-an and ex-team owner in F1 Gerhard Berger, who insisted that Fernando Alonso is clearly the No 1 man inside the Scuderia garage. The Austrian argued the Spaniard is Ferrari's only shot for the world title and that it's only natural for the Italians to play all their cards on the 2-time world champion.
“Let's not kid ourselves. Alonso is clearly the better man in the team; their only chance for the world championship. (Ferrari president Luca di) Montezemolo went shopping for him and he is going to play this card as hard as he can,” said Berger in a recent interview with Auto Motor und Sport.
Additionally, Alonso's former teammate at Renault Nelson Piquet Jr., who is currently looking at a future inside NASCAR but is keeping a close eye on what happens in the Great Circus also, agreed that the Spaniard is currently the better racer at Ferrari. According to him, the only other option for Massa is to fight hard and prove he can be faster than Alonso.
“It's hard for Massa that Alonso came into the team later but is faster. But Ferrari will not miss an opportunity to give a driver the opportunity to close the gap to the championship leaders,” said Piquet Jr., who insisted that Ferrari would have done the same for Massa if the situation was reversed.
“If Massa doesn't want this to happen, then he has to work out a way to go faster than Alonso – there's nothing else he can do. Because if he'd been ahead of Alonso in the championship, it would have been him going past,” added the Brazilian, referring to the German GP team order controversy.
With 7 races to go in the 2010 F1 championship, Alonso is 20 points behind leader Mark Webber in the overall classification (although in 5th place), while Massa sits in 6th place, 44 points behind his teammate.
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