Alonso: Ferrari will be hard to beat

The world champion scored a comfortable victory last season with Renault, but Ferrari dominated last week's test at the Circuit de Catalunya, suggesting the Italian squad will be the ones to beat this weekend.

Alonso, however, remains hopeful McLaren will be able to win, but the championship leader is under no illusions about the difficulty of the task.

"It will be difficult, as always," the Spaniard told reporters during a Vodafone karting event in Barcelona.

"We saw the Ferrari package is really competitive. They dominated the test last week so I expect to have big opponents in the two Ferrari drivers this weekend unfortunately.

"We think it will be interesting. We improved the car but as we saw last week everybody did the same, they improved the car and now it is time to see in the race which of the teams have done a better job.

"This we never know until Saturday afternoon but fingers crossed we are able to beat Ferrari, but it will be difficult."

Alonso arrives in Spain as the championship leader, but tied on points with Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen and his own McLaren teammate Lewis Hamilton.