Fernando Alonso says KERS failure in qualifying did not cost him places on Malaysian GP grid

The Spaniard set the ninth fastest time in Q3, meaning he will start eighth thanks to Kimi Raikkonen's grid penalty for a gearbox change.

Despite making it through to the final part of qualifying, which his team-mate Felipe Massa again failed to do, Alonso does not believe that a fully functional KERS would have enabled him to climb any higher up the order.

"It was a good qualifying, because I think we got everything we could out of the car," said Alonso.

"I had a KERS problem on my only run in Q3. I don't think it cost me any places, but it would definitely have made the gap to pole [1.3 seconds] look more realistic."

Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali praised Alonso's efforts in the F2012 in difficult circumstances."We should regard this result as a glass half full," he said. "Once again today, Fernando did a great job and it's a shame that he had a KERS problem, the first in a long time.

"This prevented him from doing a much better time on a track where this system delivers a significant benefit.

"We know that we are in difficulty in this early part of the season, therefore we have to look at limiting the damage on track, while working to make the F2012 more competitive in as short a time as possible."