Fernando Alonso is on the verge of his first Formula One championship entering this weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix, while Kimi Raikkonen must win only to have a slight chance of keeping alive his title chances.
"It is an important race in that I can become champion but if I don't win on Sunday it is not the end of the world. I will race many years to come," Alonso said.
"Only winning matters," Raikkonen said. "For some time we have been in this situation but the championship is not up to us even if we win all the races."
PHOTO: EPA
Renault's Alonso needs a third-place finish in Sunday's race to officially succeed Michael Schumacher and become F1's youngest world champion. A victory for Raikkonen would extend the title chase only if Alonso finishes below third.
With points on a 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis, there are a number of combinations that could give Alonso the title -- most in the Spaniard's favor. He has a 25-point lead -- 111-86 -- with three races to go and needs to leave Brazil with at least a 21-point lead.
Raikkonen is realistic.
"Of course i am interested in winning but it is not going to happen for the others to have three bad races in a row," Raikkonen said.
Alonso has already made F1 history as the youngest race winner and pole sitter when he did both in 2003.
He remembers his first victory.
"It was a good day two years ago in Hungary. That moment was the greatest achievement in my career," Alonso said.
He didn't win again until this year but made up for lost time with six victories in the first 12 races. He hasn't won since the German GP on July 24 but hasn't lost much ground with three consecutive second-place finishes.
He remembered his humble beginnings with a small team in 2001.
"When you arrive in Formula One you believe in yourself. You have to have confidence. You think you can win in Formula One," Alonso said. "But obviously if you start with Minardi and the next year as a test driver you go down a little bit and you think it is much more difficult.
"At the end everything went very well with Renault. We grew up together and we are in a position to win now and I am very happy for this."
He could become the new champion after turning 24 last July. He will be a year younger than Brazil's Emerson Fittipaldi when he won the first of his two world titles in 1972.
"It doesn't matter what age you can achieve it. I have been lucky to have good opportunities when I was young and I have several opportunities to become champion," Alonso said.
Raikkonen has been doing his best to slow Alonso's drive to the title.
The McLaren-Mercedes driver has won three of the last four races.
He could have won the other easily. At the Italian GP he had the fastest time in qualifying but was penalized 10 spots on the starting grid and eventually made it to fourth.
The Finn led three other Grand Prix before a car failure late in the race -- once on the final lap.
Raikkonen has a slight edge over the Spaniard on the 4.3km Interlagos circuit in Sao Paulo. He finished second at the track in the past two races, while Alonso was fourth and third.
Raikkonen even had a victory briefly in 2003 when torrential rain stopped the race. At first Raikkonen was given the win but a check of the positions had Giancarlo Fisichella leading at the right time. There is a chance of rain tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Schumacher, who won his first title at age 27, has four career victories at Interlagos.
Winner of the last five F1 championships, Schumacher is third in the standings with 55 points -- 56 points behind Alonso and long out of contention.
"We will as usual try our best and we hope the circumstances turn in our favor," Schumacher said of his attitude for tomorrow's race.
The only thing Schumacher has now is memories of past championships especially his first 11 years ago.
"It was a long time ago," said Schumacher, remembering back to 1994 when he was with Benetton. "There was a huge celebration we had afterward. There was huge joy on the team so it will be something special for them."
Schumacher's only victory of the year came at the United States GP, when seven teams dropped out because of safety concerns over tires.
The German driver also has not finished five races including two of the last three. From 2001 to 2004 he dropped out of a total of four in 68 races.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier