Q & A with Fernando Alonso

The Renault star told a press conference afterwards that his and Mark Webber's traffic issues are a sign of things to come in Spain and Monaco and explained why his team still has work to do to catch the leaders. AUTOSPORT was there to hear what he had to say.

Q. Did you think you might be able to get [Rubens] Barrichello in the end, and would that have been the maximum for you today?

Fernando Alonso: No I don't think so because Barrichello is four tenths in front of us so that's a little bit too much. I think seventh is more or less our position - seventh in Q2, and Q3, so we were not expecting any different thing.

Q. What happened in Q1 with the traffic issues with Adrian Sutil and Robert Kubica?

FA: I think Q1 it is always the same thing. You need to be lucky and traffic will always be a problem, here especially because some of the cars were doing two laps, others were doing only one timed lap so there was a difference. Some were on out-laps and some on timed laps, it happened in China and it happened here as well. I think it will be much worse on the short circuits like Barcelona and Monaco. It will get very difficult in Q1, because there are a lot of cars running.

But we managed to get through Q1 so you know... But as I said it is more luck than anything else because you never know which cars will complete a second timed lap and which ones will come in to the box.

Q. It took you quite a long time to get up to speed, was that a problem or was it your strategy?

FA: It's strategy maybe because we didn't plan anything but we were doing our programme. We didn't care too much about the times. I know that sometimes we were P20 but we knew that we had a lot of fuel at that particular part of the session and we were not worried. But obviously you always want to be at the front; Toyota, Brawn, when they run a lot of fuel they are still in the top six. This is something that we are missing right now, when we put fuel in we go immediately to the back places. We know that we need to find some more performance, but we had a good qualifying. Being in Q3 was the target, at one point in Q2 I was even third and that was even better than expected so I think so far the weekend has been good. But tomorrow is the day to score points and we will try again.

Q. Is this the circuit that suits KERS the most that we have raced at this year?

FA: Not sure about that. It's not easy to make a real calculation, because simulations and what they say is one thing, how you drive the car and when you press the button is a different thing and that is impossible to calculate. In Malaysia it was good and obviously at the start I made a lot of places up and this is also difficult to quantify how much of an advantage it is for the race strategy to gain some places at the start. It's not an easy decision, it's not an easy device.

Q. With all the changes, how easy if for you drivers?

FA: For us it's very confusing. We let the engineers decide what the best solution is. For us obviously when you have KERS fitted it is obviously a bit more complicated to drive, because you have to concentrate on some other things on the steering wheel, pressing the button and things like that. But we are professional drivers so that should be not too difficult for us.

Q. Your realistic target for tomorrow?

FA: I think top five, top six is the maximum we can really expect. I think the cars we have in front us we are quite sure are quicker than us so we cannot beat them in the race. So we need to wait and see if they have a problem or a retirement to see if we can beat them so this is the reality. We need to concentrate in our race to do the maximum and try and finish in front of the Ferraris that are starting behind us. Also the Williams of Rosberg. But we know that the people in front of us are there because they are quicker.

Q. McLaren too?

FA: Yes I think McLaren have made a step forward this weekend and Hamilton has been quick in Q1 and Q2 as well. So it is not that much of a surprise to see him in Q3 in front of us - it is not as if he is light or anything like that. Probably he is even heavier than us. I think seventh is what we deserve and tomorrow we really need to do our maximum if we want to take points. We do some mistakes or we are not quick enough we risk being out of the points so we need to really concentrate tomorrow.

Q. Moveable front wings... are you expecting people to use it to maximise speed in the final corner?

FA: At the moment, more in qualifying, the front wing adjuster is used just for performance, corner by corner to help the balance of the car. Tomorrow as you said maybe it is a good opportunity to use the adjusters for overtaking manouvres. Here is a great circuit to overtake, there are maybe three or four places to really have a go. The front wing will maybe help them with that as well, we will find out tomorrow.