Alonso looking forward to Canada

(Scuderia Ferrari SpA via Twitter)

Ferrari's Fernando Alonso heads to this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal with the tag of 'best of the rest' as the Spaniard currently lies in third place in the Driver's championship behind the Mercedes duo of Nico Roberg and Lewis Hamilton.

Alonso has spent this week in Maranello preparing for the Canadian Grand Prix while Kimi Raikkonen has been in Scandinavia carrying out sponsorship duties for the team. Alonso revealed:

'After Monaco I felt a good atmosphere in the factory,” said Fernando. “Everyone is very motivated and hungry for good results. We are realistic and well aware of where we are at the moment, but from now on, we want to be in a position to get better results and enjoy our race weekends a bit more and everyone is working in one direction to improve the car'

Alonso believes that spending time with the engineers and mechanics back at the factory helps the team to achieve tangible results on track as it is a great way for him and team mate Kimi Raikkonen to provide feedback to the factory based staff.

Speaking to the official Ferrari website, Alonso discussed the Canadian Grand Prix by saying:

'We have been improving the car on the aero side, while in the simulator, we have done a lot of work on the set-up with the aim of arriving in Canada with a better car,” revealed the Ferrari man. “We can’t make any predictions because our improvement has to be seen in relation to what our competitors come up with. We need to match them and then find a plus.'

Alonso has fond memories of the Canadian Grand Prix having won the event here on his way to the 2006 Driver's championship with Renault. He said:

'It has only six or seven corners, but each one has something special. They have an element of danger and getting them right brings you a lot of lap time. There is definitely no room for error, as all the walls are very very close. You can feel the city of Montreal has a lot of passion for the race and everyone gets involved in some way. I won here which definitely provides good memories and I also remember that big storm a couple of years back which meant the race was stopped for hours and we were waiting on the grid. There have been ups and downs in terms of results and hopefully this year will be a good one.'

©Ben Johnston 2014