Ferrari not worried by Alonso pole

After Alonso headed into the weekend suggesting that he wanted a change of approach from his team about qualifying, after heavy fuel loads left him further down the grid that he would have liked so far this season, the Spaniard duly grabbed his first pole of the campaign.

Brawn reckons that performance, where he edged out Schumacher by two tenths of a second, had more to do with relative fuel loads between the cars than the speed of their packages.   

When asked by ITV after qualifying if he was surprised Alonso took the top spot on the grid, Brawn said: "I will be tomorrow if they have got more fuel than us, that is all you can say.

"With all the times you saw develop yesterday and today, they may be playing a very clever game but we will find out tomorrow if things are different.

"I did think after the last races where they carried too much fuel for qualifying they would change their approach and that is what they have done."

Schumacher himself said that he was confident Ferrari were in a good shape for the race, despite having lost out in his battle with Alonso for pole position.

"My first run wasn't that clear in terms of traffic and preparation, and neither was the second. There were quite a few cars ahead of me, but nevertheless we are on the front row, we have a good package, a strong race pace and it should be interesting tomorrow."

Alonso said after the session that his run to pole position was fairly troublefree - after getting through the frantic Q2 session.

"It was not easy this morning (in practice) or yesterday to find a balance, but I think we did a good job with the car," he said. "We made changes overnight and for qualifying, it worked okay.

"Qualifying is always stressful and difficult and in Q2 you cannot make any mistakes or you are out. In Q3 everything worked fine for us and we had no problem and no traffic - it was completely the opposite of the other sessions."