Red Bull advisor slams Alonso’s “funny comments”

There's still more than two months to go before the 2013 Formula 1 season gets underway, but the competition between championship-winning team Red Bull and Ferrari is already hotting up.

Writing in the latest edition of Red Bull's in-house magazine, the Red Bulletin , the team's motorsport advisor, Helmut Marko, has hit out at its main rival, Ferrari's Fernando Alonso. In the article, Marko argues that championship winner Sebastian Vettel was much more focused on the task in hand in 2012, while the Spaniard got too caught up in politics and psychological warfare.

"Sebastian's driving was virtually flawless," Marko writes. "The way he shuts himself off from the rest of the world, so that he can still call on reserves that other drivers might not have. [...] Fernando Alonso, for example, is busy with politics and funny comments. Vettel ignores it all; he doesn't read newspapers, or the internet. And that's the point: we concentrate on our job, to make the fastest car and the best team possible."

Despite having an inferior car last season, Alonso pushed Vettel all the way to the last race for the championship victory - but, as Marko points out, he used psychological pressure off the track as well as on it.

"I believe we saw the stress he was under towards the end of the season," Marko continues. "Saying things like, 'I'm competing against [McLaren's Lewis] Hamilton, not Vettel.' [...] These psychological skirmishes. We said, 'Just ignore him'."