Alonso not planning aggressive strategy

The Spaniard, who has struggled to make an impact on the top three teams since returning to Renault, qualified on the front row for the Spanish Grand Prix by running an aggressive, light, fuel strategy in Barcelona.

But while he has frequently pinpointed Monaco as a track that can go some way to equalising the current performance gap between Renault and rivals Ferrari, McLaren and BMW, Alonso doesn't think that running light on fuel will pay dividends at the Principality.

"I don't know what strategy we will choose for Saturday, but I think here the fuel effect is too little to gain much," he said. "In some circuits 10 kilos (less fuel) can put you right in the fight, or at least on the front two rows of the grid.

"Here you gain maybe 0.15s, so you need to remove 20 or 30 kilos and then you will go 20 laps less than the others and this is not good. There is not much play with the strategy here in Monaco, even if it seems as if you should always go light to qualify in front, or fuel heavy and have confidence for the race.

"At the end of the day we always choose a two-stop strategy and the teams always seem to stop more-or-less on the same laps so there is nothing special."

Alonso, who won the Monaco race last year, ended both free practice sessions on Thursday in seventh position, nearly 1.2s off the pace of Lewis Hamilton. He admitted afterwards that he was expecting that kind of performance gap this weekend.

"I think we are in the position we deserved," he said. "And in a position that needed changing in the last three races. But for sure when you arrive in Monaco you think maybe things are different because it is a special track, and you hope that the car will perform differently on a completely different track.

"But that was only a hope, today is more real."

Both Alonso and his team-mate Nelson Piquet had brushes with the wall on the first day's practice, and while the Spaniard refused to accept that the lack of driver aids had made things more difficult, he did concede that the Renault R28 was tricky to drive on the Monaco streets.

"Yes it is difficult to drive," he said. "Nelson was P18 in the first practice and P15 in the second, and I was struggling as well. We had more difficulties than some of the other guys, but I think we have room to improve, and we have some ideas to change the car on Saturday and prepare for qualifying.

"This is very important here, the race is not so important, qualifying is the main goal for this weekend."