Alonso's full focus on 2012

Fernando Alonso says that "half a tenth of a second for next year" is more important than his finishing position in this year's championship.

Ferrari was off the pace early in the season having looked strong in testing, a result put down to a wind tunnel anomaly. As a result, Alonso says it is more important to make use of the remaining practice sessions to ensure the data from the wind tunnel translates in to performance on the track, despite being only 13 points behind Jenson Button in the battle for the runner-up spot.

"We will continue to use the Friday practice as a test session aimed at next year, trying to collect as much data as possible for the guys in Maranello," Alonso said. "More important than evaluating new components is the work of checking the correlation between what we see on the race track with what we see from the wind tunnel. This means we can work with confidence through December and January, knowing that all the data we have in the tunnel is real."

And Alonso also said that the target had to be finding extra bits of performance ahead of 2012 rather than worrying about results in the final two races.

"We need to get the most out of ourselves this winter and arrive in March with the best Ferrari possible. It is much more important to learn for the new car: better to get half a tenth of a second for next year than to be second in this Drivers' championship. But I can see how hard the engineers and mechanics are working to get me to second place, with the whole team being really motivated, so for them I will be trying my best this weekend."