Trulli: I'm as quick as Alonso

Trulli was out-paced by his Renault team-mate in the early part of the season, but in recent races seems to have had the measure of the Spaniard. But as always seems to be the case in Trulli's career, he has suffered through unreliability and hasn't finished a race since Monaco. Indeed in the French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours the Italian was fighting for position with Michael Schumacher and on for a potential podium when he retired.

"From the beginning of the season I've been doing really well," said the Italian, " but the problem is I never had the chance to show it properly. Many times I raced with a problem and I still did the race but I looked bad and people started to criticise me.

"The last few races I've had less problems, but again I didn't finish. What really matters is scoring points, and even now, when I'm doing well, I'm not scoring points, so it's a big frustration for me."

Trulli also reckons that with the new rules insisting that a driver must start the race with the same amount of fuel he qualified with, it is much harder to judge who is quicker between team-mates. "Qualifying is a lot down to fuel," he said. "Many times we have a different strategy, one lap or 2kgs difference.

"I can say that I lost pole in Malaysia, but I'm not looking for that. My team-mate is doing very well, he's a very quick team-mate, and I get on well with him. I'm only saying that I'm as good as him, and I can do the same things he's done. Unfortunately I'm not finishing races!"