Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali says his squad needs to keep things calm and straightforward this weekend in its effort to hold off the Red Bull drivers and take Fernando Alonso to the World Championship.
Alonso was third quickest in practice today, behind McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel, but ahead of the Red Bull of his nearest title rival Mark Webber. Asked how confident Ferrari was feeling about its prospects following practice, Domenicali said he could only take a pragmatic approach and let the weekend unfold.
"It is not a matter of confidence, but a matter of what is going on,"he said. "We saw McLaren very, very fast. We need to see a comparison of program with what McLaren and Red Bull did with their cars. It will be exciting, I am expecting tomorrow a very interesting qualifying and a matter of lots of factors in the race.
"We need to be lucky, need to keep the head on the shoulders until the last moment because we have seen if you react emotionally in the race then things can go in the wrong direction. We need to be very concentrated."
Domenicali added that thinking too much about race strategies or the potential for team orders in his own team or elsewhere could take Ferrari down unhelpful tangents so it was better just to focus completely on trying to win from the front.
"On our side we have to not think of too many strategies as we could get lost," he said. "Just get focused on the best performance that we can and that is all. All of us are trying to control emotions inside – that is part of our role."