Alonso 'satisfied' after reaching Q3

"I am satisfied to have reached Q3 because I had some doubts that we would this morning," said Alonso, who had admitted he expecting a tougher weekend than in Malaysia, where he finished in eighth place.

"But we made several changes before qualifying and we felt they were an improvement after Q1, and that gave us the confidence to be more aggressive in Q2.

"Once we had qualified for Q3, we knew that it would be difficult to match the pace of the leading cars because we had already been pushing to the limit, so we took the decision to prepare for the race tomorrow.

"We will now see if we can get some points this weekend," added the double world champion, a winner in Bahrain in 2005 and 2006.

Renault teammate Nelson Piquet, on the other hand, was disappointed after qualifying in 14th place.

The Brazilian admitted he was hoping to reach Q3.

"I am a bit disappointed because I had hoped to reach the final qualifying session today, even though I knew that it was going to be difficult," he said.

"I did not do a perfect lap on my final run in Q2, but I hope that I will be able to reverse this tomorrow and that I can fight through the field. The race will be very competitive and we will have to fight hard, but I am determined to attack and to continue learning."