Alonso stays realistic for the race

The Spaniard, who qualified in the front row in the last race in China, finished in seventh position in today's session, and reckons he will need a bit of luck in order to beat any of the cars in front of him.

"I think top five, top six is the maximum we can really expect," said Alonso. "I think the cars we have in front us we are quite sure quicker than us so we cannot beat them in the race.

"So we need to wait and see if they have a problem or a retirement to see if we can beat them so this is the reality. We need to concentrate in our race to do the maximum and try and finish in front of the Ferraris that are starting behind us. Also the Williams of Rosberg.

"But we know that the people in front of us are there because they are quicker."

The two-time champion admitted his Renault team is still lacking the performance needed to fight in front with a heavy fuel load, but he is still eyeing a good points finish tomorrow.

"Obviously you always want to be at the front; Toyota, Brawn, when they run a lot of fuel they are still in the top six," he said. "This is something that we are missing right now, when we put fuel in we go immediately to the back places.

"We know that we need to find some more performance, but we had a good qualifying. Being in Q3 was the target, at one point in Q2 I was even third and that was even better than expected so I think so far the weekend has been good. But tomorrow is the day to score points and we will try again."

Alonso came close to missing the cut in Q1 after being slowed by traffic, the Spaniard saying both Robert Kubica and Adrian Sutil had been in front of him in crucial moments.

The Renault driver warned that the traffic situation will be much worse at the Spanish and Monaco Grands Prix next month.

"I think Q1 it is always the same thing," he added. "You need to be lucky and traffic will always be a problem, here especially because some of the cars were doing two laps, others were doing only one timed lap so there was a difference.

"Some were on out-laps and some on timed laps, it happened in China and it happened here as well. I think it will be much worse on the short circuits like Barcelona and Monaco. It will get very difficult in Q1 because there are a lot of cars running."