• Spanish Grand Prix

Red Bull is untouchable - Alonso

Fernando Alonso thinks Red Bull has the edge heading into qualifying © Sutton Images

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• Drivers:
• Fernando Alonso
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• Felipe Massa

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• Red Bull

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• Spanish Grand Prix - Free Practice 1 & 2

Fernando Alonso does not think anybody can beat the Red Bulls at the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend, if Friday's practice times are a true reflection of its pace.

In the afternoon's session Sebastian Vettel set the fastest time ahead of Mark Webber, over 0.7 seconds quicker than his nearest non-Red Bull competitor. Alonso was fourth fastest 0.8 seconds off Vettel and does not see how anyone can beat them if they maintain their form.

When asked if the Red Bulls were untouchable, he replied: "Well, regarding what they showed today in second practice, yes. They have been very, very quick and it is very difficult for all of us to aim for those times. But sometimes we will see some good Fridays for some people, and then on Saturday they struggle a little bit more. So fingers crossed we can find something in our cars to be closer to them, and hopefully then they will make a mistake somewhere in the set-up or whatever and we can close the gap. In normal conditions we know it is going to be very difficult to beat them this weekend."

Ferrari was testing its version of the F-duct throughout Friday, but Alonso said it still needed to be better understood before it is added to the car permanently.

"As for the new rear wing, we will decide this evening whether or not to also use it in qualifying and the race: the system worked well but obviously, despite the fact we have tested it on various occasions, we still lack a bit of experience before we can get the best out of it."

Team-mate Felipe Massa is confident the rear wing-stalling device did improve the cars performance but said it might not be obvious due to the rate of development among Ferrari's competitors.

"The updates we brought here have definitely allowed us to make a step forward in terms of performance, but other teams haven't been sitting around twiddling their thumbs," he said. "We still have work to do to find the ideal balance on the car, because today it was not as good as on the last two days of the test we did here last February. Probably the track conditions are very different to what they were then, as is always the case on the first day's running, but clearly we have to study the data carefully to understand which direction to go in, in terms of setting up the car."

Chief race engineer Chris Dyer said Ferrari's programme on Friday had longer-term objectives in mind as well.

"We had a very complicated programme to run, with many new technical elements to test, both for this race and for the more long-term future. We managed it, which means we now have a lot of data to analyse. On top of that, we also worked through the usual preparation of the cars for qualifying and the race, including the comparison between the two types of tyre available. From what we have seen, we can expect the usual very close battle, both in qualifying and the race."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.