Alonso pledges to race title contenders

The downpour that marred qualifying at Monza has left Kubica, Raikkonen and Hamilton well down the order, and eighth fastest Alonso has said the trio will not have easy time when they come to race him.

Speaking about his approach to the race, Alonso said: "It will be difficult because we believe that we are quite slow in dry conditions. Also we should have a good amount of fuel in the car, so maybe our pace will not be too quick and we will have to defend our position.

"But I am ready to do it. I will defend my position to the maximum, because I am eighth so I am in the points from the starting point of the race. I know there are three contenders for the championship behind me, and if they want to overtake they will have to take risks."

Alonso admitted that qualifying at Monza had been hard because of the changing conditions and poor visibility.

"You have to be always on the track because with this unpredictable weather, you don't know when the good moment will be," he said. "So you need to keep running every lap of the session and you need to try to have no traffic, no missing the chicane, and try to put together a lap when the conditions are good.

"We were just on the limit in Q1 and a little bit better in Q2, and then Q3 was difficult especially because of the traffic.

"The visibility was also very poor with the long straights - that was my first difficulty. Especially in Q1, there were 20 cars, I could not see anything on the straights and I was backing off some laps just to have some space."