Ferrari can fight for the Championship

On current form Ferrari wouldn’t be the team many would back to take the 2011 Formula One crown.

With defending champion Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull team looking the dominant force during the early stages of this seasons championship, with McLaren looking most likely to push them for the early results, Alonso remains confident that the best is yet to come from his Ferrari.

'We think we can do good things with this car. We saw in Australia it was not enough to fight for victory. We need to work, but at the moment the championship is very long and we remain comfortable.' Fernando Alonso told the BBC ahead of Malaysian qualifying.

Ferrari had expected to be challenging Red Bull in Australia for the win, but in reality, Ferrari ended up having the third fastest car on the grid, behind Red Bull and McLaren who were the surprise package in Melbourne after a disappointing winter test session.

Alonso was also beaten by Petrov in a Renault, but the former two-time F1 champion remained content with his fourth placed finish.

'It is not a bad result after what we saw in Australia. We need to be calm and do our job - we are strong enough to fight for the championship.

'Our competitors are strong - we respect them a lot - fighting with McLaren and Red Bull is not easy at all but that is also a nice challenge for everyone here.'

In Malaysia the Ferrari has appeared to be well off the low fuel pace of both Red Bull and McLaren and Alonso will hope that under race conditions the gap between them and Ferrari will shorten.

However a patient Alonso looks happy enough to continue picking up solid points finishes while Ferrari press on with developments to improve the car and considering his end of season run in 2010, not many would bet against him turning the corner to battle for his third World championship soon.