Alonso confident he still has edge on Schumacher.

Although recent form would suggest otherwise, Fernando Alonso insists he continues to hold an advantage over Michael Schumacher as they head into the final few races of the 2006 Formula One World Championship.

With just two points separating the increasingly bitter rivals as the series heads to China, Japan and Brazil, Alonso is desperate to prove he has the pace to beat Schumacher to his eighth and final title, despite having seen a healthy 25 point lead shrink to almost nothing in just six races.

Indeed, Alonso has not been out of the lead for the championship since the 2005 Bahrain Grand Prix, but is under immense pressure to perform after his disastrous engine failure at the Italian Grand Prix put him well on the back foot.

Nonetheless, he is eager to show he can rise to the occasion, not least because he wants to leave Renault with the gift of a second world title before he defects to McLaren-Mercedes in 2007.

"We have been leading all year and we want to finish in the same position," he told Reuters. "Honestly, I think the motivation is greater than ever. These are the last three races for me with this fantastic Renault team, and also the last races for Michelin in this era of Formula One. So our motivation to win is enormous, and I think we can do it."

It has been a turbulent couple of weeks for the championship battle with much of the angst occurring off the track rather than on it. Although the banning of mass dampers from Turkey has been reluctantly accepted by Renault, the issue surrounding Alonso's controversial grid penalty for blocking Felipe Massa in qualifying at Monza has stoked further bad feeling between Ferrari and Renault.

Indeed, while Schumacher announced his retirement in Italy, Alonso has since branded his rival as being an unsporting driver, even if he retorted by insisting it has been a pleasure to race against him.

Still, despite the psychological tension, Alonso is remaining traditionally calm and positive about the final three races, the Spaniard relishing the potential head-to-head on three of the calendar's most reputed drivers' circuits.

"The important thing in the next races is to give the maximum to the team. We always knew that it would be very tight at the end of the championship and I was prepared for this," he added.

"At Renault, we were ready for the opening races and totally competitive. Maybe we started at 95 percent of our maximum while the others were at 70 percent. Now everybody is at 98 percent or 99 percent and the performance is very, very close," he added. "We know we have the performance to win races and we need to make it happen."