Vettel confident he would have beaten Alonso

Sebastian Vettel is convinced that he would have won the Bahrain Grand Prix had he not suffered a rare spark plug failure on Sunday. The German, who started from pole position, successfully defended from a charging Fernando Alonso's Ferrari but feels that the Spaniard never held a realistic chance of winning the race when lying second. After passing team-mate Felipe Massa for second at the start, Alonso trailed Vettel until the Red Bull's problem kicked in on Lap 33. Until then, the Spaniard had tried attacking the German although Vettel is sure that the Oviedo driver's grip levels were soon set to drop.

"In the car I had no idea," Sebastian told the official F1 website of his sudden technical problem. "I just realized that there was a dramatic lack of speed. At some moments if came back again but on the straights there was a fundamental difference to the car before and after Lap 33. The fourth place is somewhat damage limitation but until that hapless lap it was really our race.

"We were better at dealing with the tires than everybody else. Fernando tried to attack but realized shortly after that he would destroy his tires in doing so, so it would have been our day." Admitting that to lose a race from car problems provoked a sense of déjà vu, following a number of failures which arguably lost him the title last year, Vettel carries a large amount of confidence into the second race in Melbourne.

"We know that we have a great car – that we are very competitive – in qualifying and in the race," he began to conclude. "Until 16 laps before the checkered flag, the race was 100 percent coming our way, so we have to avoid issues and then we're in a very good shape – that bolsters the self-confidence for the next rounds."