Alonso not worried by wet race prospect

The Ferrari driver clinched his second pole in a row on Saturday, after edging Red Bull rival Sebastian Vettel by less than a tenth.

Alonso, who is 19 points behind championship leader Mark Webber, admitted he is expecting a difficult race tomorrow, but reckons Ferrari will be strong both in the dry and in the wet.

"It is going to be a tough race but we are in the best position to start," said the Spaniard after securing his 20th pole position in Formula 1. "Obviously pole will help in the dry and in the wet in terms of visibility so let's try to take the opportunity.

"Tomorrow if it rains in any part of the day there will be parts of the track that will remain wet so it is a race to survive in some way. Starting on pole is the best thing, we are not worried about wet or dry as we should be quick in both."

Alonso conceded, however, that his pole will mean little if the race is wet tomorrow.

"We know that there are some circuits where it is important to be on pole, and this is one. If it rains on the day Turn 3 or Turn 5 will be wet, so maybe pole means a bit less in those conditions because you can lose four or five seconds - it is the best position to start the race.

"In preparation for this Sunday afternoon you need a good Saturday and today we did it."

He added: "The main target is to be on the podium. At the moment Lewis and Mark are in front in championship, so the target is to finish the race in front of them if we can, and if we cannot then finish as close as we can to not lose more points. The job for tomorrow is to do that and when someone else is leading the championship we compare with those."

Alonso had a small scare during the second qualifying segment, complaining about the mapping of his engine.

The issue came after team-mate Felipe Massa was unable to set a time when his car stopped in Q1 with an apparent engine issue.

"We tried to understand Felipe's problems obviously, looking at telemetry but until car is back we will not know," Alonso added.

"We made some safe changes in the car to avoid risks. We ran with experimental hings here and after Massa we went back to the old one. In Q2 we were running old maps on the car and in Q3 with the right maps the car was feeling better."