Fernando Alonso, the Spanish two times champion fears that top finishes will be out of his team’s reach for the coming season. He says that the best position Renault can hope for, at least at the beginning of the season, is P7.

After dominating the tracks during 2006 and 2007, Renault has fallen behind during the last season due to lack of balance and insufficient use of the new Bridgestone tyres. The whole team has been working hard to solve these issues, but Alonso thinks that the efforts won’t be enough to get close to BMW, let alone Ferrari and McLaren.

However, some progress has been made, but it is not going to be enough according to the Spaniard two times F1 world champion.

"We are pretty far behind. We are not in a position to fight for anything important right now. I think it's looking like at the end of last year: two Ferraris, two McLarens and two BMWs, and if everything goes like that, you can almost only fight for seventh place. Thinking about the podium would be too optimistic right now, but then you arrive in the first grand prix, you start warming up in practice, your morale starts going up and you think you can be on the podium. But right now, thinking coldly, reaching the podium is a dream,” he said.

“In our current shape it will be hard to make it into Q3,” he added.

Alonso also thinks that both Ferrari and McLaren could be challenged by BMW this year, as the German team has closed a good portion of the gap that has been separating it from the top.

“Two or three weeks ago BMW were a little bit behind, we were close to them. Now they are very close to McLaren. They (BMW) are going very fast. They have not shown their cards. They are running with the tank full and are doing very good times.”