SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

Alonso targets podium

Fernando Alonso has targeted a podium finish in the Singapore GP after the world championship leader qualified his Ferrari fifth, some 0.85s behind Lewis Hamilton's pole position time.

Fernando Alonso has targeted a podium finish in the Singapore GP after the world championship leader qualified his Ferrari fifth, some 0.85s behind Lewis Hamilton's pole position time.

Alonso and Hamilton have both won three times in 2012 but the Spaniard's championship lead is based around consistency and extracting the most from the F2012 in race conditions.

Alonso won Valencia from 11th on the grid but concedes that Ferrari does not have the pace to win in Singapore.

"In the fight for the championship two of my main conmpetitors (Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel) are ahead of me on the grid and two are behind (Mark Webber and Kimi Raikkonen), so tomorrow we will see if we can finish ahead of three of them," Alonso said.

"We have more or less faced the same problems as last year at this circuit, so maybe it is a characteristic of the car design that in these particular corners, traction corners, we are not at the top, so we need to improve on that.

"Some of the parts we brought here have worked and some have not, so there is a little penalty but for race pace we normally improve and I guess here will be the same.

"Saturday is our weak point of the weekend, we are never able to extract the maximum from the car over one lap, but in the race I expect a good pace and a little bit less tyre degradation can put us in a fighting position for the podium. I think that's our maximum target."