Brazilian GP: Fernando Alonso wants 'chaotic' race in Vettel fight

Ferrari's Fernando Alonso says he is hoping for a "chaotic" Brazilian Grand Prix to help him beat rival Sebastian Vettel to the world championship.

Alonso is 13 points behind the Red Bull driver and must finish on the podium to have any chance of overhauling him.

"We know to win the championship we need some retirements or something strange happening," Alonso said.

"So we hope for a chaotic race, with many things happening, rain-affected or whatever. With that, we have a chance."

Vettel will start Sunday's race fourth and Alonso seventh, and rain is predicted throughout Sunday in Sao Paulo.

To take the title, Alonso must win with Vettel lower than fourth, be second with Vettel below seventh or be third with the German lower than ninth.

Alonso, who qualified behind team-mate Felipe Massa on merit for only the second time this season, denied that he had made any major changes to the car in anticipation of a wet race.

And he said he hoped the strong wet-weather form he and Ferrari showed earlier in the season would still be apparent if it did rain in the race.

"In the dry we are not competitive and in the wet the car is performing well sometimes and we are a little bit more comfortable," he said.

"So we see tomorrow. Last time it rained was a different circuit, four months ago and the cars have changed a lot.

"Obviously [for Ferrari to be] better than in dry conditions is not difficult so I'm sure in wet we can pick up some more performance."

At the United States Grand Prix a week ago, Ferrari deliberately broke the seal on Massa's gearbox to promote Alonso one place on the grid and move both cars on to the cleaner side of the track.

But Alonso said there was no chance of that happening again in Brazil.

"In Austin, no-one understood the decision," he said.

"There was confusion coming from some part of the pit lane. [If] we start sixth and eighth, our simulations say we arrive ninth and 10th into the first corner; starting seventh and 11th, we arrive fourth and seventh, so it was a very easy decision to make in Austin.

"It was not to give me one position. It was to give the two cars several positions and we are 13 points ahead of McLaren thanks to this in the constructors' [championship] but of course people don't want to tell this reason, they want to tell some other reason. So here [there is] no difference in the grid side. So for the team overall positions is good.

"We are fifth and seventh [after Williams driver Pastor Maldonado's five-place grid penalty], so we both start one behind the other and hopefully we go together to the first positions in the first lap."

He said that he would be happy with his season whether he ended the year as champion or not.

"The highest point is to be sitting here with a car [with which] we are constantly eighth [on the grid] in the last races, [yet] we are still talking about a world championship fight," he said. "This is something not normal.

"So I'm very proud of this and the achievements we had this year.

"If we had a normal season maybe we had the points of someone similar with our car and you say bye-bye to the championship maybe in Monza or Singapore and you have very relaxed races in the last part of the championship as we had last year.

"But because we did something not normal we found ourselves eighth on the grid [here in Brazil] and a lot of people think we have a chance to win the world championship because they trust so much in our jobs on Sunday.

"This is the thing that fills me with pride and I will remember this season like this whatever happens."

He added that he would be in a much better position in the championship had he not been taken out at the first corner at the Belgian and Japanese Grands Prix in collisions with Lotus drivers Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen.

"The low points of the championship are Spa and Suzuka because without our fault we lost… maybe we were mathematically world champion in Austin without the two losses, 36 points or something that we [would] have now. That will also be remembered," he said.