"Yeah, this morning we had an engine problem, but that can happen," he shrugged, "Obviously, the engines for the races are much more prepared. For testing and Friday practice, the engines are sometimes not completely new and you always have a little bit more risk, so I'm pretty sure that these things will not happen in the races."
The Friday sessions, and recent testing performances in Barcelona, do appear to have allowed Alonso to revise his outlook for the weekend, however, with the prediction that he was now looking for a top five finish replacing the previous aim of scraping into the points.
"We hope to finish in the top five in the race, that's the target," he confirmed, "Maybe the podium possibility is not too far, but we probably need some luck and to have a very good qualifying tomorrow. Then we need to have a think about our strategy and to have something better than the others. If not, our normal place will be fourth or fifth - with [the penalised Lewis] Hamilton obviously behind us. If he can make up some places and finish in front, maybe [we can achieve] fifth or sixth.
"So we will see what we can do but, for sure, we need the points and we are ready to take them. It's one of the races that I'm more concentrated on because, in Barcelona, we had an engine failure, in Turkey I was fifth or sixth – I don't remember – and, in Monaco and Canada, [we scored] no points again. So, in the drivers' championship, I am a little bit too far from the position I want to be in and, in the constructors' championship - which is more important this year because I'm not fighting for the drivers' championship - I want to have the team at least finish in fourth place, behind the top three teams. But, right now, we are a little bit too far from
Red Bull. They have 21 points, I think, so it's up to us - and I take responsibility as well - to score points and help the team to finish fourth."
