Alonso praises Ferrari's updates

The Italian squad has introduced several new components in its F10 in the hope of moving forward, and the team enjoyed a good qualifying on Saturday.

Alonso qualified in fourth position, with team-mate Felipe Massa in fifth.

The Spaniard admitted he was pleased with his performance, and conceded things would have been much harder for his team without the upgrades.

"I am happy with this result," said Alonso. "Here, so many teams, including Ferrari, have brought new parts and so it was important to show we are capable of fighting for the top places.

"We managed it and we must bear in mind that, without the updates we have on the F10, we would probably have struggled to make it into Q3.

"Tomorrow, we have the potential to fight for a podium place: it will be important to get a good start, choose the right strategy and not make any mistakes because the walls here are not forgiving.

"Obviously, reliability will be very important as this track is very tough on the cars. With the harder tyre, our car was more competitive as its behaviour inspired more confidence over the flying lap, but to have done Q3 with this compound would probably have compromised our race."

Massa believes a better result was possible given the performance of the car, but the Brazilian said traffic had prevented him from getting his tyres working perfectly.

"Today, we had a good car and the potential was there to do better than this fifth place," he said. "In Q1 and Q2, I was very pleased with the handling of my F10, but in Q3 I was not able to improve, mainly because of traffic that prevented me from preparing the tyres properly.

"It's a shame, because I could have been starting from third place tomorrow: from fifth it will be harder to fight for a podium finish, but the chance is still there within our grasp.

"The updates the team has brought here contributed to making the car more competitive and they lived up to our expectations: we must continue down this route for the rest of the season."