Piquet feeling no added pressure

While Alonso taking a strong third place on the grid, Piquet failed to make it through to Q3 again - despite having been fastest overall in final free practice.

But although unhappy with his own performance, the Brazilian insists he is not in need of a good result to show people what he is capable of.

"I know what I can do, I don't need to prove it to anybody," Piquet told autosport.com. "People in the team know what I have done in testing, so I don't need to keep proving it to everybody. I know what I am able to do.

"It was a bit disappointing. We didn't do a very good strategy in qualifying so it didn't help us a lot. But for sure we improved massively from Canada."

Piquet felt that his slight upturn in form this weekend, which helped him to top the times in practice, was partly the result of competing on a track he has previous knowledge of.

"I knew the track, so I knew that wasn't going to be a problem," he said. "The thing is when I don't know the track, things are difficult. In Canada it was raining for one session, and stuff like that, which didn't help."