Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso said that he had to work hard for his usual fifth place qualifying slot for the Brazilian Grand Prix at the Interlagos track, saying that he was surprised by the way that the gaps in Q3 had shaken out.
Alonso qualified fifth, behind the front two rows of Red Bull and McLaren for yet another race in 2011.However, the Spaniard had been expected to struggle, having seen an upturn in form from the Mercedes team throughout the practice sessions at Interlagos.
In the end though, Nico Rosberg struggled to recreate his earlier pace and Michael Schumacher failed to set a lap time in Q3, allowing Alonso a more comfortable drive to fifth.
But he admitted that the team may need to pray for rain in the race tomorrow in order to compete for a win.
"This time...getting to my classic starting place on the grid was a bit more of a struggle than usual," he lamented after the qualifying session.
"We are not very pleased with the balance of the car and we were expecting a very competitive Mercedes. However, in Q3, we got much closer to the McLarens than we could have expected, while the first of the Mercedes was left a few tenths back.
"What this means is that we managed to get a little bit more out of it than our potential would indicate."
He added: "If it really rains tomorrow, it will be a very exciting and open race.
"No one really knows how competitive they can be in the wet and then it requires next to nothing - one lap more or less out on track at a time when the conditions change – to turn around a situation that looks set in stone.
"It's true that for us, the problem of getting the tyres up to temperature are more acute in the wet, but then it's equally true that when the track does dry, we are quicker than our rivals."
His team mate Felipe Massa was again left scratching for excuses after only managing 7th place on the Brazilian GP grid.
He admitted that his chances of qualifying well had been hit when he was forced to use a second pair of his soft tyre allocation in the Q2 session, leaving him short for Q3.
"I was expecting more from this final qualifying of the year and I definitely cannot be happy with this seventh place<" he mourned, "Unfortunately, we were unable to find the right balance throughout the weekend.
"In some corners I was locking up the front and in the slower ones I suffered with understeer, in others I lacked traction: all in all, the car was rather difficult to drive."
He added: "On top of that, it was a rather complicated day. I had to use two sets of Softs in Q2 and I paid for that in Q3, as I could only do one run."
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