Alonso: Tyres impossible to predict

Alonso, who posted the third quickest time in today's practice session, said it was impossible to predict the behaviour of Pirelli's tyres for the race, which is why he is adamant that keeping an open mind about the strategy for the race is very important.

He feels that unlike in previous years, knowing how the tyre will degrade on Sunday is now impossible.

"That is something that will remain unknown until Sunday afternoon," said Alonso of the tyres on Friday. "Not only here, but in all the races in all of the championship.

"In the test we saw high degradation on the tyres, but circuit to circuit it will depend because there are different asphalts, different energy into the tyres in all the circuits in the calendar, different track temperatures that we will face around the championship and it is impossible to say now we will do two stops, in Malaysia four and China three.

"There is no possibility to do that. We will go weekend by weekend.

"Also I think from Friday you normally see one kind of degradation that from Sunday is different, the track has a little bit more rubber and there are other categories that is helping the tyre well, so we will see. We have some good information today but on Sunday it will depend, and it will be in our hands to change the strategy.

"We will not have a clear strategy before the race. We will remain very open. We have fuel for the whole race so there is no panic to prepare any lap to stop. When the tyres are finished we stop, if the tyres keep going well we don't stop, so it will be the same for everybody."

The Spaniard also suggested drivers would be happier with a stronger tyres, but conceded they had to accept that the rubber is designed to improve the show.

"I think they have a very clear direction," he said of Pirelli. "They have been working with that tyre for a clear objective which is to make the tyre degradation a little bit higher, to see more pitstops and more show and there was the intention last winter, or the end of last winter, the indications from the FIA and they achieved that.

"I think the tyre had a bigger degradation. At the same time the grip level in the last lap is quite good, quite high and the timed laps are quite competitive regarding the double diffuser loss, so I think they work quite well.

"Obviously from a driver point of view we want the best tyre possible, and we could ask for maybe a better warm-up for the harder tyres that normally is difficult. Normally you need a lot of laps to make the temperature come and when the temperature is coming there is no more rubber on the tyres, so there are some difficulties there.

"Apart from that the tyres are working well and are the same for everybody so we need to get used to them."