• Monaco Grand Prix

Alonso warns of more to come

Fernando Alonso was fastest in both sessions © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• Monaco Grand Prix

• Championship:
• FIA Formula One World Championship

• Drivers:
• Fernando Alonso

• Teams:
• Ferrari

Thursday's pacesetter Fernando Alonso is expecting to unlock even more lap time from his Ferrari in qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix.

Alonso's best time of 1:14.904 was a tenth faster than his nearest competitor and he was quick on both hard and soft tyres.

"It's only Thursday, so the main aim was to understand how the tyres work and get confident with the circuit," he said. "On this track a major set up change might give you half a tenth, but trusting your driving can see you gain half a second. We therefore worked on finding the right feeling with the car and on making it easy to drive. There is still a lot of work to do and quite a margin for improvement.

"The track conditions will get better by Saturday, given that so many cars from the different categories will be running over the next couple of days. I hope that in two days time I will again find a well balanced car."

He added that Red Bull would not dominate qualifying and the race like it did in Spain.

"I can understand that there could be a level of pessimism after the show of strength from Red Bull in Barcelona qualifying, but we know that here, having the right set-up can make more of a difference than pure aerodynamic downforce and we already have a good baseline, given that last year, Kimi [Raikkonen in a Ferrari] nearly took pole with a car that was far off the F10 in terms of its potential."

Felipe Massa, who was a long way off the pace a week ago in Spain, said he had already found a considerable improvement in the car after just one day's running.

"The situation is definitely very different to Barcelona," he said. "From one week to the next I have found a much more stable car which is easy to drive and has much more grip. I have to say I can only be happy with the F10 and the way things went today. Having said that, there is still a lot to do to be done to be as well prepared as possible for the rest of the weekend."

He added that he was still worried his weekend might be ruined by getting held up in qualifying.

"The traffic could be a problem, especially in Q1 and we will have to try and manage the situation as well as possible. Here it is always difficult to get a perfect lap: there are so many slow corners where you can lose a lot of time, which you never get back. However, getting it right is really especially satisfying."

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