Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso has refused to rule himself out of the drivers championship fight in 2010, despite his Belgian Grand Prix ending pointless after he crashed in the closing stages of the rain-affected race.
Alonso had worked himself back into the championship race following strong finishes in the German and Hungarian GPs, but he finished pointless in the Belgian race after crashing at Rivage in the closing stages of the race, shortly after a late rain shower hit the track.
But despite his lack of points, which left him 41 points off the championship lead, Alonso insisted after the race that he was still in the championship battle.
"For us it is still a possibility," Alonso smiled pleasantly when asked about the title, "There are the same five drivers that can win and our chance is still 50/50, just as it was before the race.
"As we said before this GP, there were seven races and now there are six where everything matters and who does the best job will be champion."
He added: "In the first of the seven we did not do well enough and some others did better. Jenson [Button], [Sebastian] Vettel and me, after this first race of seven. were not good enough. So for the remaining six we need to make up the ground that we lost here."
He insisted that his self-inflicted retirement was not a major issue for the rest of the title run-in, pointing out that he was one of a number of title challengers to be affected by the hectic Belgian race.
"Only two of the five competitors for the championship scored points [in Belgium], and in the next race maybe it is the opposite and we'll go back to the positions we had yesterday [Saturday] afternoon, where we were all close in the points," he shrugged nonchalantly.
Alonso's bullish confidence was echoed by the Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali, who insisted that the Italian team was still in both championship fights, despite dropping some 80 points behind Red Bull in the constructors championship.
"This weekend definitely did not end well for us and the situation in both championships is certainly more difficult, but it is still not impossible for us to reach our targets," Domenicali waffled.
"For those with short memories, I remember that three years ago, we found ourselves in a much worse situation and we all know how it went in the end."
Alonso's team mate Felipe Massa, meanwhile, took a "positive" fourth place from the Belgian weekend.
"I think this is a positive result and, given the way the race went and the accidents that put Vettel and Button out of the game, we can even say we were a bit lucky," Massa smiled after the race.
He added: "This weekend, Red Bull and McLaren were stronger than us, but we worked well as a team, making the right choices before and during the race.
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