Alonso: My motivation is to beat Toyota

The Spaniard, a two-time champion and winner of four races last year with McLaren, has failed to fight near the top this year as his Renault has not proven competitive enough.

The Renault driver has scored just 18 points so far and is currently in eighth place in the standings with six races left.

But Alonso insisted his motivation remains intact thanks to having redefined his goals, and he admitted his target now is to get Renault into fourth place.

"You change your targets," said Alonso when asked how he kept himself motivated. "We all want to win, we all want to fight for the championship but when you realise it is not possible you need to make a new target.

"For me now it is to help Renault finish in fourth in the constructors' championship, so my target from now until the end of the season is to beat Toyota.

"It doesn't matter if we are fifth or sixth, or 11th or 12th, we need to finish in front of them and hopefully in the points.

"That is the new motivation - you arrive to Monza, Spa, China, wherever, all weekend you are very, very focused because you want to reach your target."

Renault are currently ten points behind Toyota in the standings, although Alonso gave his team somewhat of a boost on Friday, topping the times in the second practice session at Spa.

The Spaniard, however, admitted his time was not representative of how strong Renault will be this weekend.

"I think it is unfortunately very clear. We ran with less fuel, probably, than the others - or I want to guess that," he said.

"More or less, we will be in a similar situation compared to some other weekends. I think it is true that our normal position is a little bit unclear because sometimes we are eighth, sometimes we are seventh and sometimes we are 11th on the grid - so maybe this weekend is one of the good ones where we can be sixth or seventh.

"Obviously with Ferrari and McLaren there are four cars that are unbeatable, so you are fighting for fifth if you beat BMW Sauber and all these teams. So it is difficult to get something more than that."

He did confess that it was a boost to see his name on top of the timesheet.

"Yes, absolutely. It is only Friday and in Valencia I was P2 on Friday and I was out of Q3, so I don't know if it is a good start to the weekend!

"But Spa is also a special place. We all want to do well here in Spa and Monaco, these type of places, so the weekend has started very good and tomorrow is a much bigger challenge if we want to do well in qualifying."