David Coulthard on Ferrari's title hopes

So Fernando Alonso is 100 per cent sure he'll be world champion this year, is he? Well that remains to be seen, but that's no reason not to admire the guy's attitude.

Yes, he's 13 points behind Sebastian Vettel in the race for the championship. Yes, his Ferrari appears to be inferior to the Red Bull at present.

And yes, he hasn't beaten Seb properly since the German Grand Prix - eight races ago. But there's absolutely nothing he can gain by throwing in the towel now and coming out with some boring sound bite along the lines of 'it's still mathematically possible, but it's a long shot.'

He clearly agrees. Just look at some of the stuff he's been posting on his Twitter account in the past week. One that sticks in the mind is, 'If they break your sword, fight them with your hands. If they cut your hands, push them with your shoulders, even your teeth...' You get the feeling that if the need arises, he'll pick up his Ferrari and carry it over the line.

We may look at that kind of mindset as being a bit unnecessary given how much the cards appear to be stacked against him, but imagine you're one of the 1000 or so people employed to work on Ferrari's Formula 1 programme in one way, shape or another.

If your figurehead is coming out with that kind of talk, and putting that much confidence in the machine behind him to push him towards his goal, you can't help but be inspired by it.

If it's getting late one night, will you knock off 10 minutes early because you're tired?

Alonso still trails Vettel by 13 points in the title race © XPB

No. You'll stay, you'll do those extra calculations that may solve a problem and give the car a tenth of a second, safe in the knowledge that your talisman will find a tenth and a half in himself in confidence alone just through being more comfortable in the car.

That's his inner ninja coming out.

What can Fernando do?

Despite his bloody-mindedness that he will win, he realistically has to hope for a) an upgrade that will make the Ferrari the equal of the Red Bull - and quickly, b) a bit of unreliability for Seb or a turn of events weather-wise that plays into his hands, and c) that he can just keep maximising what's possible from that Ferrari every weekend.

Both he and Vettel have had some misfortune this year, so there's no reason why one of them may not have some more this weekend in Abu Dhabi. If all goes to form, however, they may as well start engraving 'R' for Red Bull on the constructors' trophy. In fact, they'd probably be advised to start with the 'S' for Sebastian on the drivers' cup too.

A return to pure racing

The best thing about the Indian Grand Prix was its simplicity. With the Pirelli tyres allocated for the weekend allowing for an easy one-stop strategy, laptimes were, on average, closer to those in qualifying than at any other race this year.

There's something deeply uncomfortable to me about cars lapping nine seconds off what they've managed in qualifying, but in current F1 that's normal at the start of races because drivers have to manage fuel, tyres, brakes, everything...

Managing your car is nothing new. Even in my day, which encompassed the refueling era and the 'spring-to-the-stops' attitude, you had to manage your car. But never to this extent.

It's taking over too much in my opinion. A case in point was that in India, Williams managed to set some of the best laps of the race, but through looking at the data afterwards they saw that Pastor Maldonado had managed things too much and still had the kind of residual pace in his car that could have allowed him to finish a fair bit higher up the order. It's simply not a good sign that drivers are having to manage to this extent instead of pushing.