Alonso: Red Bull has quickest car

The 2005 and '06 world champion had no answer for Sebastian Vettel's pace in the early part of the race in Bahrain two weeks ago, but inherited the victory when the Red Bull suffered an exhaust failure.

"I think maybe performance-wise maybe Red Bull is a bit ahead of everybody now, which is not a surprise because they finished 2009 very strongly, so they kept the momentum," Alonso said. "But one thing is to be the fastest car and another thing is to win the race.

"At the beginning I was not able to attack because he was definitely quicker than me with the soft tyres. Then with the hard tyres it seemed that I was a little bit more comfortable, but maybe he was controlling that part of the race or something - it's always difficult to say.

"I think we need a couple of races to understand the picture better. We will try to push them again, and it will depend also circuit to circuit. Hopefully here in Australia we can be strong and we can fight for the win. We were lucky enough to win after his problem, hopefully we can start in front of him and not need to wait for any problem."

Alonso also played down rumours that Red Bull's Renault engine is more fuel efficient than the Ferrari unit, allowing the Red Bulls to start the race with less fuel on board.

"I think this rumour, 6kg [lighter] or whatever, is just a rumour," he said. "I don't think that anybody is able to put money on who was the lightest car at the start in Bahrain, maybe there are some surprises. So we don't concentrate on that, we just concentrate on our fuel consumption, we are happy with what we achieved in the winter."