Alonso not ruling out podium finish

The Renault driver admitted, however, that his main priority will be to score points in order to help his team in the standings.

"First of all we will try to finish the race in the top five, which is the main priority, to keep scoring points," said Alonso, last year's controversial winner of the race.

"We are fighting with two or three teams in the constructors' championship, we are very close in terms of points and it would be nice to score as many points as possible tomorrow.

"Starting fifth obviously the first target is to finish in the top five, but we know tomorrow there will be mistakes from the drivers, so anything can happen in the race and the podium is quite close as well. We will do our maximum and hopefully finish in the best position."

The Spaniard said his car's handling had been far from ideal, but he is aware that his qualifying position has given him a good advantage considering how hard overtaking will be.

"Maybe we have more problems than others with the rear end of the car," Alonso said. "We changed the set-up completely yesterday night to avoid this oversteering we had, and we didn't improve too much. We will try tonight to get a better car in race pace.

"But I'm extremely happy with qualifying in fifth position because how difficult it is to overtake here, so starting at the front is crucial and we managed to do a good lap before the red flag. So fifth is very good."

Alonso insisted things continued to work as normal in the team following the controversy of the race-fixing scandal.

"It has been completely normal and everybody is quite focused on the weekend and very motivated to have good results in the remaining races of the championship.

"We know there's not going to be improvements for the car, so we know that it's going to be tough, so we need to maximise our potential in the car and everybody is quite clear on this."