• Ferrari news

'Extraordinary' lap needed to beat Massa in qualifying - Alonso

Fernando Alonso: "Massa is doing a fantastic job, he is driving 100%" © Sutton Images

Enlarge

Ferrari's Fernando Alonso says it will take an extraordinary lap to qualify ahead of Felipe Massa in his team-mate's current form.

Massa has outpaced Alonso in both the qualifying sessions so far this season and was quicker in the final two sessions of 2012 as well. Alonso played down the significance of the recent results but admitted Massa is very difficult to beat at the moment.

"He is doing a fantastic job, he is driving 100%," he said. "The calculations you are doing are strange calculations because it's races from last year and races from this year, and in Australia we were on dry tyres on a wet track and in Malaysia when we were on intermediate tyres on a nearly dry track. I don't think they were completely normal qualifyings, but it's good and he's doing a good job. Hopefully I can finish ahead of him in some qualifyings this year and if I do so it will be an extraordinary lap."

Alonso retired from the race in Malaysia after damaging his front wing against Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull and then losing control when it folded underneath his car. However, he is remaining calm about the lost points and expects his rivals to fail to score at races too.

"There are two or three DNFs [on average] for everybody in the championship over the last ten years of Formula One," he said. "What happened to [Nico] Rosberg in Australia was an unlucky situation with the electronics and what happened to me in Malaysia was also unlucky. I hope not, but I guess it will happen to me again at one or two other Sundays because the average is for two or three DNFs per season. I will be prepared for that and when it comes to the others we need to take the opportunity to score the maximum points."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.