• British Grand Prix - Qualifying

Alonso predicts close fight behind Red Bulls

Fernando Alonso qualified third for the British Grand Prix © Getty Images

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• Drivers:
• Fernando Alonso
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• Lewis Hamilton
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• Nico Rosberg
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• Sebastian Vettel
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• Mark Webber

• Teams:
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• Red Bull

Fernando Alonso is expecting a close fight with Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Robert Kubica at Sunday's British Grand Prix, but fears Ferrari missed its chance to challenge Red Bull at the last two races.

Alonso is starting third on the grid behind Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber at Silverstone and is hoping to make up for points he lost out on at the European Grand Prix. However, he predicts that he will be in a closer fight with cars behind him than the two Red Bulls in front.

"I think it has been a good weekend for us so far," he said. "We are competitive as we were in Canada and we were in Valencia. Those two tracks were not that suited for the Red Bull cars so we had an opportunity there to fight with them, and here with these high-speed corners we knew the Red Bull was the strongest, the favourites and we thought to have a tight battle, with Renault, McLaren and Mercedes.

"If you see the qualifying times it is quite tight, the McLarens are close to us, and Renault and Rosberg as well."

He said that the car was improving consistently but the true test would be converting the on-track performance into points.

"I think we did improve the car in Valencia," he added. "Canada was good as well so we continue to develop the car to perform better and better. We feel more comfortable now and are performing better now.

"We had strong races in Canada and Valencia but didn't score the points we wanted, but here we are again strong, we are competitive, and hopefully we can score some good points for the team tomorrow.

"We need to capitalise on potential and score points we didn't score in the last two races."

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