Fernando Alonso says he’s not disappointed to be only fifth on the grid in Singapore, and the Ferrari ace remains convinced that he has a good chance of making progress in the race.
Alonso believes that the fact that his car is kinder on its tyres than some of its rivals will pay dividends.
“I think I’m happy because it’s the place we deserve, it’s the maximum we can achieve so we have to be happy to exploit the potential of the car,” said the Spaniard. “But I think when you see the final times and you see that with one tenths we were third, that can change your race if you are third or fifth. Unfortunately we are the fifth one today, and tomorrow we will try to recover.
“The start will be important, the high degradation of the tyres will play a big role tomorrow, and also there is the possibility of safety cars, some people will come in, some people will stay out, if we make the right calls tomorrow in the right moments, the podium possibility is still there.”
Alonso said he hadn’t ruled out the possibility of winning in Singapore once again: “Winning the race is not out of the question, but we need some help from the others.
“We’ll see. It’s possible, yes. As I said I think there will be many different strategies in different parts of the race, there are the two compounds o the tyres and it’s not clear which one is better to use in the race. I’m sure that there will some mix of strategies. If you make the right one you recover places very quickly. As we saw this year with the KERS, DRS etc, it’s easy to overtake. I’m still confident.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Surprised Alonso doesn’t choke when suggesting a safety car might improve his performance at this particular track!
I am looking forward to this race, the first five rows all taken up by team mates running together. What are the chances of some embarrassing inter team contacts
Very good point on the team mates!