Alonso unsure about victory chances

Fernando Alonso is unsure about his chances of fighting for victory at the Belgian Grand Prix, but the McLaren driver reckons he will give rivals Ferrari a hard time

Double champion Alonso will start the race from third place after finishing less than a tenth of a second behind Kimi Raikkonen, who led Ferrari teammate Felipe Massa to secure a front row lockout for the Italian squad.

Alonso said he expected Ferrari to be as strong as in Turkey, where the Maranello outfit scored a dominant one-two, but he believes McLaren have made progress since then.

"We are quite confident, to be honest," said Alonso. "As they said we all know that maybe Spa was a little bit more like Turkey and we saw Ferrari very strong there.

"We expect them to be strong and fight for the win as well. We made some improvements since Turkey and we can fight with them.

"I don't know if we can fight them for victory but hopefully it won't be as easy as Turkey."

Alonso had a scare in the dying moments of qualifying, when he spun off the track in his penultimate lap. He managed to recover, however, and went on to beat teammate Lewis Hamilton.

"I lost control completely of the car and spun," he said. "The first set of tyres was gone in that moment and I had only one chance at the end, only one opportunity, so I was a little bit worried that something could happen in that single lap and my position would not be good enough.

"But everything went smoothly in the lap with no problems. I was lucky to make the last lap and good enough to be at the front."