After topping FP2 and FP3 in his impressive Aston Martin, Alonso was unable to get involved in the fight for pole as he ended up fifth-fastest, half a second down on 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Max Verstappen. 

Despite being out-qualified by both Red Bull and Ferrari cars, Alonso was able to edge out the Mercedes pair of Russell and168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史: Lewis Hamilton. 

And Russell reckons🧜 the two-time world champion’s eye-catching ꧙race pace will make him a real contender in Sunday’s curtain-raiser. 

"I think we've got a fight on our hands𒅌 for P3,” Russell told Sky. 

“Ferrari over the last four years have always been really strong in qualifying and struggled a bit more in the race, so I'm relatively pleased to be not so♛ far behind them.

"Fernando is probably more of a dark horse than Ferrari൩, he had some really good race pace in testi🀅ng, so I think it's going to be a good fight for P3. 

"It's just a shame the🌸 Red Bulls are a bit too f❀ar ahead for now."

Russell, who pipped Hamilton to sixth by just 0.044s, was encouraged by Mercedes’ qualifying 𒉰performance after a difficult start to the Bahrain weekend. 

"Friday was a bit of a shock for us because we didn't really know why we loཧst so much performance or were off the pace,” he said. 

"We made some changes and they exceeded our expectations, so that's a positive, but after wi🐓nter testing this is probably where we expected to be.

"Our goal over the winter was to make sure we've got a car we can build upꦚon and that there aren't any significant problems.

"We spent probably three-quarters of last ye꧟ar problem solving...and now I feel we've got a car which is nice 🌠to drive.

"It generally feels like aꦚ good car, an𓆏d now we can focus on adding downforce and performance which is what the team have done for so long. 

"There are definitely siꩲgns to be positive, but we've got a lot to improve.”