Fernando Alonso reckons sixth is the best result Ferrari can hope for in the Bahrain Grand Prix

The Ferrari driver, who admitted ahead of the weekend that he was expecting Bahrain to be the most difficult race for his team, will start from ninth position after not posting a tine in the final qualifying segment.

The Spaniard ruled out fighting for the podium positions, and said sixth or seventh is a realistic goal for him.

"The top six is the most realistic target, knowing that the first five have been very quick all weekend," said Alonso. "But [Daniel] Ricciardo is sixth, [Romain] Grosjean is seventh and [Sergio] Perez is eighth, so we can fight in that group and our strategy should be based on overtaking those cars.

"We know Michael [Schumacher] was out in Q1, but he has a lot of new tyres so he can recover well, as the Mercedes is quite fast on the straights.

"Kimi [Raikkonen] has also had a good weekend and he has a lot of new tyres and he starts right behind us, so he could be a strong rival. Fighting to be in the top six or seventh will be hard, but that's the target."

Alonso said his decision not to post a time in Q3 was not strategic, but based on the fact that he had used up all his soft tyres in the first two sessions.

"We didn't save, we had no more tyres," he said. "We used one soft in Q1 and two in Q2 so in Q3 we are doing a lap with a used soft.

"We didn't use it because you put more laps on to start the race and there is no point to run it and like this we have a couple of hours to think what tyres we want to use in the race so we have that choice now, so let's see."