Alonso hoping to toast birthday with race win

FERNANDO ALONSO had just one birthday wish on his mind when he turned 24 today — to become Formula One’s youngest-ever world champion.

The Renault driver leads the standings by a commanding 36 points going into this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring, where he made history by becoming the youngest grand prix winner two years ago.

Now he wants to go one better and secure a maiden world crown, which would become almost inevitable with victory on Sunday.

Alonso is putting the birthday champagne on ice until tomorrow night when he hopes to toast a major step towards the world title.

He said: "In the middle of the weekend there is no time to party or enjoy ourselves too much. Hopefully we can get a good result and have a double party after the race.

"I think for sure one of the wishes is to be champion this year. I have a good position, we have done a good championship so far. We need to finish the job that we are doing at the moment and try to be champion at the end this is my main wish for my birthday."

Alonso refuses to take his title for granted though, insisting Raikkonen is still a threat.

He added: "If I retire in two or three races the championship would be very close, so we need to finish the job. I will be the youngest in history I am already youngest to get a pole position and race win."

Despite their championship advantage, Alonso's Renault team have been fighting to keep up with McLaren for the past three months.

Raikkonen's speed advantage has been wasted by a string of mechanical failures and Alonso hopes to further frustrate the Finn by beating him fair and square for the first time since April.

"It should be a good weekend for us in Hungary with the characteristics of the Renault car," he said.

"We know that we are a little bit slower than them [McLaren] in normal circumstances and on normal circuits but if we can take our opportunity this weekend, it's what we need to do."

Alonso's cause was helped by Raikkonen's German retirement, which not only robbed the McLaren man of a certain win but forced him to start qualifying first as well.

That is likely to cost him around a quarter of a second as he battles with a dusty track and Alonso is grateful for that slight advantage.

"It is an advantage for sure to be last in qualifying," he said. "It's the best place and hopefully we can get a good position in qualifying thanks to that.

"I think normally we have seen this year it costs about two or three tenths of a second to start first in qualifying.

"This can help us a lot. We need to qualify in front of Kimi and Juan Pablo Montoya because I think they will again be our main opponents."

Alonso will need a little help on the evidence of today's first practice sessions, in which McLaren again showed their speed.

The Spaniard was down in eighth in second practice as McLaren and Toyota locked out the top six.

Test drivers Ricardo Zonta and Alex Wurz took the top two spots for Toyota and McLaren respectively, taking advantage of their extended running without engine restrictions.

But Raikkonen was the class of the race drivers, coming home within a second of Zonta's best lap of one minute 20.409 seconds.