Red Bull dominated qualifying at the Albert Park circuit as Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber locked out the front row of the grid. Alonso, though, wasn't too far off, finishing in third place, 0.192s behind pole-sitter Vettel.Yet Red Bull's qualifying performance, coupled with the pace they displayed in Bahrain, has Alonso admitting that perhaps a podium finish is the best Ferrari can hope for come Sunday evening.
"Qualifying has been good for us," said the Spaniard. "We knew that to beat the Red Bulls was a difficult thing to do here, so we concentrated to maximise our potential, and third was a very good result.
"Tomorrow the race is long, so we'll try to finish the race on the podium like Bahrain, and we want to keep scoring points. There will be a long race, with safety cars, accidents, problems and it will be very tough.
"First we need to finish the race and then see if we are quick to win the race or not."
The double World Champ, who won the season-opening Bahrain GP after Vettel's Red Bull suffered reliability issues, wasn't at all surprised to find Red Bull and Ferrari at the front of the grid.
"It's not a surprise because I was not expecting a clear order," he said. "Yesterday's times mean really nothing because with a different fuel load that we have this year everyone can have different preparation for this weekend.
"Yesterday I was P15, so we were preparing the race compared to our competitors a little bit more. For tomorrow I am confident but as all three said tomorrow's race is a very long race with many things that normally happen here.
"I'm extremely happy with a place in the top three, but this is start of the weekend and tomorrow is the real job."
Source: Planet-F1
