Alonso realistic on race win chances

The McLaren driver will start from second place for the second time in a row after being beaten to pole position by Ferrari rival Felipe Massa, who jumped to the top of the times at the very end of the session.

Alonso, who finished second to Kimi Raikkonen in Australia three weeks ago, believes Ferrari's pace over long runs will make it hard for McLaren to match them during the race.

But the world champion reckons his team are looking stronger than in Melbourne.

"We will see. I think we have to be realistic and say that our pace maybe on the long runs is not as good as the Ferrari, they seem very consistent in the long runs," said Alonso.

"But we have to say we improved the car last weekend and we saw this weekend we are much more competitive than in Melbourne.

"I think the race will be more competitive than Melbourne."

The Spaniard was pleased with his performance today, and admits he had extracted the maximum from his car.

"Yes I am. We did small improvements with the car, last night and between third practice and qualifying and everything seems to work very well.

"We got 100 percent of our potential today and we should give 100 percent tomorrow. We will be okay. I am very happy with the work the team has done and we are here, a little bit closer to Ferrari, so everything is going in the right direction."

Alonso reiterated his intention of pushing Ferrari to the limit, hoping that the Italian squad will have problems in the race.

"I think anyone can have problems tomorrow, it is a very tough race with very tough conditions out there," Alonso said.

"So I think it can be a very, very long race. For sure we have to be as close to the Ferraris as we can, and for this we will push 100 percent and we expect them to push 100 percent if we are close enough."

Alonso's teammate Lewis Hamilton will start from fourth position.