“It's pointless to look for any significance in Friday's classification: I'm seventh, but I could just as well have been second or last and it would not have changed anything. It all depends on the difference between the programmes adopted by the teams,” said Alonso after setting the 7th fastest time of the day.
“There is no reason to expect a very different picture to the one we saw in Bahrain and Australia, partly because, in the space of four days, nothing much is likely to have changed. I expect Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes to be very competitive and we will have to do our best,” added the Spaniard, whose best time was more than half of second faster than Massa's.
Ferrari's chief track engineer Chris Dyer echoed Alonso's call for calm, although admitting that Ferrari's programme on Friday had some flaws in its second part.
“A few little technical problems prevented us from getting through every last item on our agenda, but nevertheless, we have gathered sufficient data to prepare as well as possible for qualifying and the race,” said Dyer, who admitted that “we need to find a bit more performance for qualifying: that is what we will work on this afternoon and tomorrow morning, in the third free practice.”
Felipe Massa added that it's too early to predict anything at Sepang, but hinted that Red Bull and McLaren look very strong ahead of the Saturday action.
“What is clear is that Red Bull and McLaren seem to be going very well. We tried to find a good set-up and to understand the behavior of the tires. The car handles reasonably well. We just need to work a bit more to improve our outright performance, but we don’t have problems in any particular area,” said the Brazilian.
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