Ferrari the team to beat in Malaysia, says Alonso

McLAREN driver Fernando Alonso expects Ferrari to be the dominant force once again at this weekend’s Malaysia Grand Prix at Sepang.

Kimi Raikkonen cruised to a comfortable victory in his maiden drive for the team in the opening race of the season at Albert Park in Australia, although his engine suffered a water leak towards the end of the 58 laps that could yet force the Finn into an engine change and a 10-place penalty on Sunday’s starting grid.

However, the defending world champion fully expects a repeat performance from the famous Italian outfit in the second date on the Formula One calendar.

“Ferrari are stronger than everybody else and I think it’s not a surprise for anybody that they come here as favourites again and maybe to win,” Alonso said.

“What we have to do is to close that gap. We know how much it will take as we saw in Australia that is was about seven or eight tenths of a second, although it’s true we don’t know what it will be here.

“We did one week’s testing here and put some new developments through the car so hopefully that gap is less but it’s not surprising. This Grand Prix will be a similar picture to Australia.”

Alonso believes the reason McLaren, expected to be Ferrari’s closest challengers this season, are so far behind is in the most part due to a winter of relative upheaval at their Woking base.

“McLaren was changed extensively after a bad season,” he added.

“A lot of things were changed in the winter. A completely new car, new designs, basically a completely new engine, new tyres, two new drivers, a lot of things changed within the team so I think it’s completely normal that we’re not going to be 100% as good as Ferrari.

“But we started the season really competitively and with a few new developments we can maybe get closer to them.”