After a tough couple of months, all eyes are on world champion Fernando Alonso in Japan this weekend. What will be his next move? Will he stay or will he go? The answers could impact the careers of several other drivers, as team bosses hold off finalising their 2008 line-ups.

Only Alonso himself has those answers, but the Spaniard seems largely unmoved, preferring instead to brush off the speculation and focus on his title hopes and those all-important remaining races...

Q: Despite the closing championship battle with Ferrari, everyone seems focused on your relationship with your team mate Lewis Hamilton - especially after Spa. Rumour has it you might not even be talking to one another...
Fernando Alonso: That's superficial. Fact is that we don't see each other very often outside the races, but when we meet - like yesterday morning - we were talking normally to each other.

Q: Do you have anything to add about the so-called 'spy scandal'? About who said what at what time?
FA: I have nothing more to say about it. I am not that type of person who will speak out in the open about this. I will try to speak in the motorhome and otherwise try to do my job. There have been so many things said about this matter and about me that are totally wrong, but these things happen and I will not answer what the media say about me every day. I will not lose time on that. And regarding next year - I have a contract with this team so I don't see any problems with that.

Q: So your relationship with the team is okay to progress forward into next season?
FA: Seems so. I have been working with the engineers, the mechanics with everybody since the beginning of the season until now with the same relationship. They are all very professional, very focused on doing the best we can - and we are achieving good results. I have won four races, I made some good podiums and I am fighting for the world championship, so everything is going quite well for me and I am happy.

Q: We constantly read in the media that 'Fernando is not happy', 'Fernando is going back to Renault... or Ferrari... or Toyota'. What is the truth?
FA: For that, there is nothing true and it is the same answer as before - I cannot answer every week, every day, unfounded rumours. I am completely focusing on the last three races and that is the only truth.

Q: Have recent races been difficult because you and team principal Ron Dennis have not been talking?
FA: That is not true. We speak, small talk, but the media have made up that we are have not talked for the last three months. I will try to win this race, the rest is not very important.

Q: Have you found your previous championship battles easier?
FA: All of them are similar in a way. When you fight for a world championship everything is difficult and hard and there is no moment to relax in a championship fight. In 2005 it was probably more comfortable when I was 20 points ahead of Kimi (Raikkonen) and Mclaren was having mechanical problems. Last year and this year it is obviously very tight. Last year I arrived in Japan on equal points with Michael (Schumacher), this year we have three races to go and I am two points behind so for sure it is similar in a way to last year.

Q: Is it easier for you to chase or to lead?
FA: I prefer to be in front. If something happens you are on the safe side. If you are behind and something happens then you can lose your opportunity. But this championship is as it is and I hope that I can do better in the races to come and end up in front.

Q: Coming back to this race, it's a fast track and the season has so far indicated that Lewis is doing better on the faster tracks. Do you think that you can break this pattern here in Fuji?
FA: I don't know if this is a pattern. I have never thought of that. I hope that I can do it here but today's times are not important for the set-up. The set-up is what matters, not necessarily the times, as Friday is a very important step for Sunday's race. And it is impossible to predict now what's going to happen on Sunday. Small details make the race better or worse for you.

Q: You said in Spa that knowing the team, the car and the tyres better is now helping you. When did you realise that you were over these problems?
FA: You keep learning constantly every weekend so for sure I am better now than in Spa, and in Spa I was better than in Monza. But for sure it was a bigger step than from Magny-Cours or from Indianapolis.

Q: How difficult is it to weigh up the risks of fighting with your team mate for the title - does it require a different approach?
FA: Yes.

All three of the contenders for the world championship met up at Interlagos yesterday, and all three gave their version of their feelings calmly and with varying degrees of confidence.

Each knows that certain sets of circumstances must come about for them to achieve their dreams - Lewis Hamilton (107 points) and Kimi Raikkonen (100) for the first time, Fernando Alonso (103) for the third in a row - and that only Hamilton is in a position to grasp the nettle and make it happen for himself.

If he wins, he is champion, simple as that. For Alonso and Raikkonen to do likewise, things must happen to the others, as specified here earlier in the week.

Hamilton is adamant that his error in China has made him stronger and more confident, rather than less, about winning the championship here, and he sounded entirely convincing.

"It definitely didn't make me more nervous," he said. "If anything it took the pressure off my shoulders and I think I came out of it even stronger. I thought it would knock my confidence and put me on my back foot, but I went away and I thought about the weekend and I feel I'm even stronger than I was, for whatever reason. It was a good learning experience. Coming here, I feel a lot different compared to the last race. The last race was always... all the pressure was building up and everything was going on, on the Thursday and Friday, and it wasn't a great weekend. But I feel totally relaxed now and fully confident in the team and our ability to challenge for the title."

But is he already seeing himself standing on the podium, crowned as champion?

"No! I think if you do that you get too ahead of yourself and that's when you can make mistakes."

He also says that his preparation for this crucial race hasn't varied from his norm. "It's been pretty much the same as always: my family had planned a little trip so they went away so I didn't really have much time with them but I had time to just relax at my real home, my parents' house, did some good training, made sure I was physically fit for this weekend as this is an anti-clockwise circuit so it's a little bit harder on the other side of your neck, and just made sure I was feeling fresh."

Alonso has to take a slightly different view, as the hunter rather than the hunted. "For sure, five or six races ago, you just concentrated on doing your job, take the weekend like the final race of the championship," the Spaniard said. "Now it's more a championship thought so when you are in the car you don't care too much about the race result, you just concentrate on how many points you will get. I think especially in this last race it's about all the combinations we know that we need to be champion. You try to do your maximum, you try to do your best. Sure it's not only up to you."

Raikkonen celebrated his 28th birthday on Wednesday, and had yet another view of things as the man with the biggest mountain to climb.

"I think you are always a little bit nervous every race, but I try to do the same as in any other race, I try to do the best I can. I try to win the race, for us to be one and two and then it's not really up to us any more, so that's really all we can do and hopefully we can achieve that."

So now the waiting is over, and things finally kick off today with the first practice sessions. For Alonso and Raikkonen they provide the chance to fettle their cars ready for all-important qualifying; for Hamilton, the vital opportunity to learn another track that he has only experienced on a computer game.