Fernando Alonso has conceded that his Ferrari team is struggling for pace in dry conditions more so than it did in the rain this weekend, with the Spaniard having to make do with sixth place during this afternoon’s qualifying session in Korea. With the use of an updated front wing, Alonso failed to out-qualify team-mate Felipe Massa.
"I’m not extremely happy, obviously," Alonso told BBC Sport. "With dry conditions we suffered more than yesterday, and we saw that McLaren and Red Bull were quick in FP3 and in qualifying as well. It’s not surprising that they are quicker than us, so between this combination we are fighting for fifth and sixth, and today I’m sixth.
"Hopefully tomorrow we can repeat the good performance that we did on Sunday in Suzuka, as normally on Saturday we struggle a little bit and Sunday we normally improve."
Alonso then went on to discuss the tyre situation this weekend, revealing that his long runs in the third and final practice session were better than anticipated.
"Not bad, I think the tyres were a nice surprise in the long runs," the Oviedo man continued. "They didn’t degrade as we probably expected, so maybe the race in terms of pit-stops is a little bit easier than what we thought before coming here.
"But for sure the degradation will be high, and we’ll talk about interesting strategies and the interesting race in front of us, so hopefully we can take any opportunity."
Further post-qualifying feelings from Ferrari:
Massa describes personal qualifying progress
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| Pos. | Driver | Team | Time | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  L. Hamilton | McLaren | 01:35.820 | 14 |
| 2. | S. Vettel | Red Bull | 01:36.042 | 12 |
| 3. | J. Button | McLaren | 01:36.126 | 14 |
| 4. | M. Webber | Red Bull | 01:36.468 | 11 |
| 5. | F. Massa | Ferrari | 01:36.831 | 16 |
| 6. | F. Alonso | Ferrari | 01:36.980 | 11 |
| 7. | N. Rosberg | Mercedes | 01:37.754 | 12 |
| 8. | V. Petrov | Lotus Renault | 01:38.124 | 19 |
| 9. | P. di Resta | Force India | no time | 16 |
| 10. | A. Sutil | Force India | no time | 14 |
| Full results | ||||
| Fernando Alonso | |||
|---|---|---|---|
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| More Fernando Alonso photos | |||
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