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Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso agree there's a long way to run in title race

But World Champion holds lead of 36 points after Montreal triumph

Image: Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel on the podium in Canada

Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel have insisted the World Championship is still wide open despite the reigning champion opening up a 36-points lead over his Ferrari rival with a devastating and dominant display in Montreal.

Nonetheless, such was the extent of Vettel's speed advantage, with every driver in the field lapped up to the fifth-placed Nico Rosberg, that the Red Bull driver must now be considered the overwhelming favourite to land a fourth consecutive championship. Whereas Red Bull had never previously prevailed in Canada, the next stop on F1's 2013 world tour is Silverstone, a circuit which is expected to suit the RB9. Having struggled in the damp and greasy conditions of qualifying, Alonso is pining his hopes on new upgrades and the rare appearance of blue skies over Northamptonshire in two weeks' time. "We know that the temperature is not helping us at the moment, but we cannot say anything because there are other people going very fast in those conditions, so it's up to us to improve," he commented. "We have some ideas and hopefully at Silverstone we can improve on that." With Vettel a distant speck on the horizon, the highlight of Sunday's race was Alonso's wheel-to-wheel joust with Hamilton. Yet while full of praise for his former team-mate's on-track conduct, Alonso reflections were also laced with implicit criticism of Sergio Perez, the driver who has replaced Hamilton at McLaren and with whom both Alonso and Raikkonen collided in Monte Carlo. "With Lewis we were really very close on the pace and there was some moments going out of turn eight to see who had the detection point and then in turn 10 the same thing, at the last chicane, so there was some action there," said Fernando. "But it was nice to have these battles, particularly this race with so talented drivers, so intelligent drivers, that, you know, you fight wheel-to-wheel and you feel safe. You feel you are racing and you are competing. It can go your way or it can go the other way, but this is real racing. So, very happy to see this back after Monaco. It's a little bit different." Whether Alonso can turn the tide in his battle with Vettel remains to be seen, however.

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