Alonso: “Qualifying is our weak point”

Fernando Alonso is not surprised by fifth place on the starting grid at the Spanish F1 GP. The Ferrari Spaniard will start behind the two Mercedes, Vettel's Red Bull and Raikkonen's Lotus.

“It is now known that Saturday is our weak point and fifth position is more or less what we expected” commented Alonso. “We were well aware that both Red Bull and Mercedes would be very strong, but if it is true that we have to try to regain points on Vettel, it is also true that the Mercedes don't scare us too much due to the high degradation. The team and I are optimistic for tomorrow, the race pace is good and usually on Sundays we manage to go better" added the Spaniard.

“We start on the clean side and hope that this will allow us to get a good start, because what we will need is to recover some positions at the start and be able to do some clean laps at the beginning or middle of the race. Another opponent we will have to defend ourselves from will certainly be Raikkonen: he has done very well in the race so far and Lotus doesn't seem to be suffering too much with the tires either. As always in this championship it will be very important to choose the best strategy, also because there is little difference between the two compounds in terms of degradation" explained Alonso.