Alonso: "Tires present biggest challenge this year"

As the second pre-season testing session came to a close at the Jerez track in southern Spain this weekend, Fernando Alonso revealed he thought that tire management was going to be the element that most shook up the coming season, and played down the effect of the new adjustable rear wing.

"The tires are going to be one of the biggest changes this year," the Ferrari driver told the press. "They are new and they don't last as long as they did last year. After 15 or 20 laps their useful life is over. So I think that the way we race is going to change this year: there will be more pit stops and different strategies. I hope that this means we put on a better show, but for the teams and the drivers it's going to be more stressful."

The Italian tire manufacturer Pirelli will be the sport's sole supplier this year, after the departure of Bridgestone in 2010. The latter company came in for criticism last season given that its softer and harder compounds were too similar, meaning that drivers were not having to deal with tire wear as much as had been expected. Given last year's refueling ban, the differing compounds had been expected to add some spice to the racing, but fell somewhat short of doing so.

In an effort to make overtaking easier, a moveable rear wing has been introduced this season. It will be computer controlled, and usable by drivers on certain parts of the track when they are within a specific distance of the car in front. The wing will provide reduced drag and therefore give the car behind a better chance of overtaking.

Alonso made clear, however, that he did not think the system would make a lot of difference. "If the car ahead of you runs only one tenth slower, the moveable wing is not enough," he told Italian publication La Gazzetta dello Sport. "It can be useful to overtake a car that is one or two seconds slower. Maybe the rule's objective is to favor an overtaking move when a race gets ruined by the impossibility of passing a much slower car, as happened to me with [Renault's Vitaly] Petrov in Abu Dhabi."

Alonso narrowly missed out on his third world championship title in the final race of the year, after a poor strategy call saw him stuck in traffic. His failure to find a way past Petrov saw the title go to Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel.