Vettel: We should have been on pole

Vettel, who looked like the favourite for pole after topping two of the three practice sessions, lost out to Alonso by less than a tenth of a second.

The Red Bull driver still believes he should have been on pole, but reckoned his session had not gone as smoothly as expected.

"I missed pole by a little bit but we should have been on pole," said Vettel. "It was not a very smooth qualifying session with traffic here and there, but that is how it is.

"Tomorrow it is more important, and starting second is not a bad thing considering they did quite a job at cleaning the circuit and second is not as bad as the last couple of years and if it rains tomorrow anything is possible. We have a very strong car no matter what the conditions."

He added: "Obviously it is not ideal, so we have to be happy with second and even if we go second or third into the first corner, depending on conditions we have a good car and are able to win. It's much more important tomorrow than today."

"This is one of the long races, it is nearly two hours, very tough, and a lot of things can happen. Surely it helps the further up you are in qualifying. Fernando started from 15th and won the race [in 2008]," joked Vettel, referring to the race-fixing scandal that helped Alonso win the race two years ago.

Vettel is also confident that Red Bull will be able to make a good start in tomorrow's race after having struggled with them in recent events.

"Lately our starts were not as good as they used to be at the beginning of the season," he said. "We struggled a little bit to put consistent starts in. We have done some homework and we should be better tomorrow.

"I don't think there is anything wrong, if you look at it I think we were a bit unfortunate. Silverstone we had the same start behind us, therefore there is not much to worry about, and we have some improvements. We don't come here with new parts so pretty much as we have been but set-up slightly different."