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Last Race: 12th May Spain

Spain GP Results
Pos Driver
1 Fernando Alonso
2 Kimi Raikkonen
3 Felipe Massa

Alonso: Lotus pace not out of reach

Thursday 21st March 2013

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Alonso: Lotus pace not out of reach

Alonso: Lotus pace not out of reach

Fernando Alonso is not worried about Lotus' pace as he believes Ferrari can match it.

The Spaniard was beaten to the Australian GP victory by a two-stopping Kimi Raikkonen last Sunday.

It was an "easy" victory according to Raikkonen, who pulled away from the Ferrari in the closing laps to comfortably finish 12 seconds up the road.

Alonso, though, is adamant Ferrari's F138 can match the Finn's E21.

"I think the pace of the Lotus was very good, but nothing that we could not do," he told Autosport.

"They had a very clean race, with no traffic and a very good strategy but the pace was nothing out of reach.

"Here we can fight a little bit closer."

The 31-year-old was also quick to point out that Australia is not a good reference for the pecking order but expects this weekend's Malaysian GP will offer a better picture.

"We have a more or less competitive car, in Australia everything worked quite fine for us.

"But it is true that Australia's circuit is a very strange and very unusual circuit.

"[Sepang] is for us a little bit of a confirmation. We need to confirm the car is performing well after some positive feelings in winter and some positive feelings in Australia.

"This is a very real test for us and again a podium will be a very good target to achieve."

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