• Monaco Grand Prix - Qualifying

Qualifying result proves step forward for Ferrari - Alonso

Fernando Alonso: "I think this is the best qualifying for the team by far this year." © Press Association

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• Race:
• Monaco Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Fernando Alonso

• Teams:
• Ferrari

Fernando Alonso believes Ferrari's qualifying performance at the Monaco Grand Prix is confirmation that the team has made a significant step forward at recent races.

Alonso will start from fifth in Sunday's race, his second best grid position of the year after his second place in Spain, but for the first time this year team-mate Felipe Massa joined him in Q3. Massa also set the fastest time in Q2 as both cars looked competitive and Alonso said the whole performance was proof Ferrari is moving in the right direction.

"I'm extremely happy," he said. "I think this is the best qualifying for the team by far this year. This is a confirmation of our step forward that maybe we saw in Spain. Overall again it has been very good for the team. In free practice we felt good with the car and we were more or less in the top five positions. Then in qualifying in Q1 and Q2 we had maybe less problems than at some other races and we had some supersoft tyres for Q3 and things like that. It's the first time we've got both cars in Q3 and the first time we don't struggle as much as at other races. This was very positive, with positions you never know, but I think P5 and P7 is the best of the year.

Alonso used all three sets of his super-soft tyres in qualifying and will start the race on his final set, but said the team was no closer to knowing what to expect from the softer compound over a longer run.

"The super-softs? I think we didn't have enough laps on them. We missed Thursday practice because of the rain and today some people tried to do longer runs than normal for Saturday practice but it was not enough to understand the degradation on the final laps of the tyres. I think tomorrow we will start the race blind, like everyone, and you have to guess and be very flexible on strategy. We need to look at last year's race as well and try to understand what are the best tactics to win."

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