Alonso says five teams ready to win

The McLaren driver reckons right now there are up to five teams who could fight for victories in 2007, if testing form is anything to go by.

At the same time, Alonso is adamant his own team are strong enough to fight at the top.

"The team is working very hard and is very focused in getting the best out of the car,"  the Spaniard told reporters during testing at Barcelona.

"What you can see is that our rivals are very strong too, that the differences are very small, just a few tenths of hundredths of a second, and I think it's going to be a very interesting championship.

"There are four or five teams who could win right now. BMW, Renault and Ferrari... I think Honda is a little bit behind. As of today, it's very close and no one know what's going on, because there's a surprise every day and I'm a little confused, so we'll have to wait until the first race.

"The important thing is to be among the top four or five cars, running well and doing as many laps as possible to improve the reliability, and that's something we did not achieve today.

"We did 40 or 50 laps and we have electronic problems, which is better to have now, but we have to work a little more on that."

Alonso also clarified his comments from last week, when he said he felt McLaren was not yet ready to win and that the colours of his car was the thing he liked best.

"I said last week that the car was pretty good, but we had to improve some things, and it was interpreted like I said the car was very bad, and I also said that I liked the colours and it was interpreted like I said it was the only thing I liked," he added.

"I like the whole team and in the newspapers you only read what they want."