Indian GP: Alonso '100 per cent' sure he will be champion in 2012

The Spaniard heads into the Indian Grand Prix needing to close down a six-point gap to Vettel in the drivers' championship, but facing a tough task because Red Bull appears at the moment to be unstoppable.

The reigning champion team has secured a third-consecutive front row lockout - something it has never done before - and there seems little prospect of anyone being able to realistically challenge Vettel at the front.

Despite the situation, Alonso is far from downbeat about his situation and, confident that big updates are coming to help his cause, he has no doubts that the title is not lost yet.

When asked by AUTOSPORT if he felt his title hopes were slipping from his grasp, Alonso said: "Not at all. I think it is more challenging for us now, but I remain 100 per cent confident that we will fight for this championship, and we will win it."

Alonso said his confidence was based on the fact that Red Bull's advantage only seems to be clear in qualifying, with its race pace not that far ahead of Ferrari.

"I think they are dominant on Saturday and they have the fastest car at the moment, so they are first and second," explained Alonso. "It was first position for Webber in Korea and pole position here for Vettel, so they are dominant as a team performance.

"But I think on Sunday normally our pace improved a little bit and we saw in Korea also that we were putting some pressure on Webber especially, so let's wait for tomorrow.

"I think we can do a good race. I still think that we can take some good points and hopefully score more points than Seb and, in the next races, be a little bit more competitive.

"But the first target is to finish in front of them tomorrow and I think we have chances to do it."

Alonso says it is no surprise that Ferrari was still behind Red Bull, because it had not yet introduced planned big updates that it needs to close the deficit.

"I think we have improved our car and we are making the car faster, especially in this race, just not in the last few grands prix. But this I think happened to every team.

"You need to put something big on your car when you are not the fastest. You need to have a bigger update and what we have here in India was a small upgrade - we are waiting for some new parts coming in the next races and hopefully we can be close to Red Bull that at the moment is very dominant.

"But I think it was a general situation all year. It is not like in the last few races the wind tunnel was not giving us the right information and we lost the pace. We were off the pace in February, off the pace in July, off the pace in September. So we keep more or less consistent then."