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Kimi Raikkonen made it to the podium for the fourth time in five races in 2013 with a solid second place in Spain.

The result keeps the Finn in the World Championship fight, and along with Sebastian Vettel he is one of just two drivers to have scored in every race.

Raikkonen looked like a challenger for victory until Fernando Alonso passed him on track at a point when both men had just one stop left.

“Obviously, we were leading, but when we were on old tyres and he had newer tyres, it’s too easy to overtake,” said Raikkonen. “There’s no point to really fight against [him] because you cannot hold him behind. I knew if I could somehow stay a bit more closer, even with old tyres, maybe I have some chance, even if I’m already behind and will be with old tyres in the end, but you never know.

“But they were just too fast. He had a good start around the outside of me. I don’t think the end result really was decided there, but we just did a different way of doing the race. We’re never happy if we’re not winning. We’re only here to try to win.

“But we kind of caught up with Vettel few points, and obviously Fernando caught me up by some points, but we’re still in the hunt. We’ll keep ourselves there and hopefully in the future just try to win a bit more.

“I think we had the speed, but we should have done it differently. Maybe more pit stops, then you can push all the time – but I think this was our best way of doing the race. That’s what we planned and that’s what we did and I think we deserved to be second and not really winning today. It’s OK for the team, the guys did a good job and we go for the next race to try to do better and get the best out of it.”

Regarding his title hopes he said: “It will not be easy. Everybody wants to win it, but sometimes you have a bad day. You try to minimise those and make the most out of them and give yourself a chance to be up there and fight for wins. I think if you can do that often it will give a good chance in the end to fight for the championship. It’s only a five race-old season, so there’s an awful lot to be raced. We’ll see what happens. We’ll try to do well and see where we are in the end.”

A second win of the season confirmed that Fernando Alonso is a serious championship contender, although he still lies 17 points behind Sebastian Vettel, who has scored well in every race.

Alonso’s Barcelona victory was his first at the track since 2006, but his third in Spain counting his surprise Valencia success last year.

“It’s very special winning at home,” said Alonso. “It doesn’t matter how many times you can do it, how many you repeat it, it’s always like starting from zero and you have again very emotional last laps, very long last laps because you want to finish obviously as soon as possible.

“I’m extremely happy for the team to have both cars on the podium after a difficult qualifying that maybe we were not too fast yesterday. But we knew we had the pace on the long runs and we wanted to have some clear air to exploit this potential in the car. We did it. Everything worked perfectly. Happy for the team, for the fans and hopefully this is not a one-off.”

Alonso agreed that getting ahead of Raikkonen and Hamilton on the first lap was crucial to his race.

“I think we knew that to win the race we needed to pass people at the start. The start was very good but then it was very narrow and we didn’t have the space to move a little bit. So, I wait for a better opportunity. It came straight after turn one. I saw Kimi and Lewis running a little bit wide in turn one so I changed trajectory and I had a clean exit in turn two. I passed Kimi and I said ‘why not also Hamilton?’

“I had a little bit of KERS that I saved from the start for turn three, so I used that to pass Hamilton and I think that was a lot in the race and I think also when exiting the first pitstop, we undercut and we overtook Vettel, in the strategy in lap 11 but not Rosberg. So Rosberg, we have to overtake him at the end of the straight. And that was also very close.

Alonso believes that he has his best chance yet of winning the championship in a Ferrari.

“Probably yes, in terms of performance of the car. We should have won the championship, I believe, in 2010. We arrived in Abu Dhabi with seven points, or nine points ahead of Sebastian [actually 15]. We lost there but nothing we can change now. Last year maybe we didn’t deserve it because we were one second off the pace but even with that we manage to fight until Brazil race.

“So, this year we have in our hands a package that maybe is not the fastest, still not the fastest but we are working on that. But definitely on Sundays it’s a very competitive team package, let’s say. We are not the quickest over one lap, maybe we don’t set the fastest time in the race but we have fantastic strategy people, fantastic pitstops, the starts, tyre degradation. We have many ingredients to have a competitive car to fight for the championship.

“In the four years in Ferrari maybe it’s true that this is the one we feel more confident with but we are not happy still with the performance of the car and we want to have a good and aggressive developing programme for the next races.”

Mark Webber will start the Spanish GP from seventh place after his tyres gave up over the last few corners of his final lap in Q3.

Webber was initially eighth, but gained a spot after Felipe Massa was penalised for blocking the Aussie earlier in the session.

Webber is normally a Barcelona specialist and regards the race as a chance to bank some serious points.

“You’ve got to take it on the chin, you’ve got no choice,” when asked by this writer how disappointed he was. “The race is still going to be very interesting tomorrow, to see how the Grand Prix unfolds. I have not a clue who is going to be strong in the Grand Prix. It is, as we’ve seen in the GP2 race, all about tyres. We’ll see who does what with the tyres.

“We’ve seen the Mercedes look very strong on one lap, but is there going to be a traffic jam early in the race? Who knows. Are they going to disappear? Are Lotus going to come through? Are Ferrari quick? We don’t know until we go out. And also the qualifying allocation of what tyres you elected to use, is that going to be the right strategy for the race? People have made their bed now, we’ll see how that unfolds in the race tomorrow.”

Webber was especially frustrated to lose lap time in the last sector, where he is usually quick.

“Especially the last sector has been strong for me yesterday and this morning, and even in Q2. But I lost the rears, I had no rear tyres. We didn’t expect that to happen. But it did, and I bled a lot of lap time from Turn 9 to start/finish. You’re losing rows on the grid when it’s that type of qualifying.

“In Q1 and Q2 we had the potential, Seb and I were in the window for sure, but that’s how sensitive it is at the moment. We’ve seen it here in winter testing too, it’s very easy to be on or off. Normally it’s a part of the lap that I look forward to.”

In Spain Nico Rosberg earned his second pole of the year and the third in a row for Mercedes, but the inevitable question is for how long the German and his team mate Lewis Hamilton can run at the front.

At the last two GPs Mercedes has earned pole and then gone backwards come the race.

“Things just worked really well the whole weekend, we just optimised everything,” said Rosberg of today. “Of course, after Bahrain we were thinking about the race a lot, also, so surprised that we could be that quick today. But it all went perfectly in qualifying and I had a really good lap in the end. I’m really, really happy with that.

“It’s always a good motivation boost and everything, especially for the team – front row, fantastic. But of course I have to be a bit cautious because of what happened in Bahrain, so for sure, nice, but to be enjoyed with caution.

“Everyone has been working really, really hard back in the factory to understand even better our problems. You know it’s really an ongoing process, understanding how to get the most out of these tyres. It’s really, really complex, for us drivers, for the engineers, for everybody and we’re just a bit behind at the moment. I’m sure we’ve caught up now.

“But then you come here and there’s different issues again because here it’s more the graining of the tyres that’s the main issue. And so then again here we were trying to catch up and make the most of that situation. I think we’ve improved things. This morning things were looking at little bit better, so I’m a little bit more confident for tomorrow but still the race is going to a whole different thing, with the tyres it’s a big challenge.”

Despite the doubts about race form he would rather be starting at the front than anywhere else: “For sure it’s a benefit to start first. Clean air – hopefully – after the start, starting on the better side of the grid, so that’s all great but the race is very long. To win it’s not good enough to start from pole, you need to have the fastest race car.

“As we’ve seen, there’s so many differences in speeds through the race and strategy and everything. And if you don’t have a very, very quick car there’s no chance. So, we just really need to wait and see.”

After losing pole to team mate Nico Rosberg Lewis Hamilton says he wasn’t entirely comfortable with his car in qualifying in Barcelona.

Hamilton was fastest in both Q1 and Q2, but missed out by a quarter of a second in the session that mattered.

“Generally this weekend I haven’t had the best of weekends up until now,” said Hamilton. “Obviously this is still great for us today, to be one and two on the grid but I’ve just been struggling all weekend generally. Even my long runs have been pretty poor but on one lap pace, the car doesn’t seem to be too bad but I’ve just been a little bit lost generally, not really knowing what things to change and which direction to go, so I kind of didn’t really make many changes into P3 and into qualifying, I just left the car the same.

“I didn’t really make any changes to it, I wasn’t one hundred percent comfortable, but I knew that it was good enough to do what we did today. As for the win, we’ve got improve our race pace but obviously we have very good qualifying pace. I hope in the near future we will get our win, but we’ll work for it tomorrow.”

Hamilton also expressed concerns about starting from the dirty side of the grid: “My side of the grid isn’t really the place to be. These two [Rosberg and Vettel] have a good position on the cleaner side but we’ll do the best job we can from the start but I think more the concern is tyre degradation. Looking after those tyres is going to be an interesting one. I really hope that we can try and get into turn one first, in a 1-2, that’d be really good for the team.”

Felipe Massa and Esteban Gutierrez have both been giving three-place grid penalties for impeding incidents in qualifying in Barcelona.

Massa was judged to have blocked Mark Webber in Q2, while Gutierrez held up Kimi Raikkonen in Q1.

Massa thus goes from sixth to ninth, handing places to Grosjean, Webber and Perez, while Gutierrez drops from 16th to 19th, gifting spots to Bottas, Maldonado, and Van der Garde.

Felipe Massa will start the Spanish GP from sixth place having been edged out by Ferrari team mate Fernando Alonso by just 0.001s.

Massa had looked strong all weekend, and topped the times in FP3. However Ferrari lost performance when it mattered.

“For sure I expected a little bit more,” said Massa. “I definitely expected to be fighting for the top three, looking that I was first this morning, the car was good this morning. But the others improved a lot, so I’m sure they were a little bit too conservative this morning, and they were preparing everything for the qualifying.

“I knew Mercedes would have been strong here, because they were very strong in the winter. It’s a track they can be very strong in the qualifying, but in the race, I don’t know – maybe a bit less.”

Fernando Alonso insists that he isn’t disappointed to have qualified only fifth in Barcelona, despite the Ferrari having looked like the fastest car for much of the weekend.

Alonso expects to show a stronger performance relative to the opposition on Sunday.

“I think this is the maximum of what we have at the moment in our hands,” he said. “We cannot compete today with Mercedes again for qualifying, it’s their third consecutive pole position. We know that the race pace is maybe a little bit better for us, so we need to wait for our opportunities tomorrow.

“We need to have a clean start, a good first lap, and then a good strategy, because tyre degradation will again be very high, and so important, so we need to be on top of that problem.

“I feel confident. The car felt good yesterday, I felt competitive. Historically Sunday has been our best day of the weekend, so no reasons not to be on the podium tomorrow. But we want to be something more than just on the podium, so we’ll see what we can do.”

Alonso admitted that he gets a special buzz in front of his home crowd.

“Yeah of course, there is always extra motivation when you race in front of everybody. But at the end of the day the car is as fast as it is always, here or in another circuit. We’ll try to do well tomorrow and give some happiness to everyone.”

A little addition to Red Bull’s regular Friday post-practice press release was a list of the five tracks Sebastian Vettel would most like to race on.

Perhaps not surprisingly Le Mans and the traditional versions of Spa and Nurburgring all feature, but American fans will be delighted to know that on top is none other than Watkins Glen, which last hosted the US GP in 1980. The triple World Champion also ranked Laguna Seca – which he has sampled in a road car – in third place.

Here’s what he had to say in full:

1.  Watkins Glen: “Because I’ve heard lots of good things about it, as in it’s a proper circuit, with lots of ups and down and loads of history. F1 used to go there but not anymore, so I’d like to try that.”

2. Le Mans: “I’ve been around there in Formula 3 but only a smaller track. I think it would be quite special to go around there in a real Le Mans prototype.”

3. Laguna Seca: “I’ve been there, but not in a race car – just a road car. It was still quite impressive though, so that might be a challenge.”

4.  The original Spa-Francorchamps: “That would have been something. I think that was a proper man’s track, with lots of high-speed corners. I can’t imagine going through the Masta Kink in a modern Formula One car.”

5.  Nordschleife (Nurburgring): “It just has to be there. I have done a couple of laps but I don’t remember most of the corners. It’s long and probably too tough for a modern Formula One car, because they’re too low. But even in a road car it’s special. I think you need big balls for the Fuchsröhre, the part where it goes downhill. You just stay flat and accelerate. You’re way above 200km/h and then you have this massive compression at the bottom and then you go uphill again and it’s just…. wow! Imagine doing that in a proper car in a 24-hour race, flat out through there at night. Amazing.”

Pirelli boss Paul Hembery says it’s too early to draw too many conclusions after a spectacular tyre failure for Paul Di Resta in FP2 in Barcelona.

Di Resta’s left rear lost its tread as he went through the corner onto the pit straight. Warned by a vibration, the Force India driver was able to back off, bringing the car to a safe halt at the end of the pit lane.

There have been similar issue already this season with the medium compound, and Hembery made it clear that the sight of a tyre without its tread represented bad PR for Pirelli.

“It doesn’t look pretty obviously when you get the tread coming away like that,” he said. “And if anything last year if we had failures it tended to collapse the tyre onto the rim, so it still didn’t look good. This year we’re seeing the tread coming away. So visually it looks rubbish, and we obviously don’t like that, and we’re looking at that and seeing if there are things we can do to eliminate it.”

Asked about the cause he said: “It’s always very difficult because you get a bag of bits back. It’s certainly causing by overheating the tread.

“The structure didn’t give way, it’s the tread – that’s what we’ve seen a few other cases, the tread is overheating and coming away. From some points of view it would be better if the structure gave way and then it collapsed and it wouldn’t look quite so spectacular. In any case it’s not something that we like and we’re looking at what we can do.”