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Alonso: Happy

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Fernando Alonso is refusing to get carried away by his fourth-place finish in the Australian Grand Prix, the Renault returnee readily conceding that he benefitted from the chaos around him in Melbourne.

Fifteen of the 22 starters in Albert Park eventually retired from Sunday's season-opener, with the double world champion one of the main beneficiaries as he came through from 11th place on the grid.

Driving an R28 chassis which clearly did not have frontrunning pace, Alonso made full use of his experience to keep out of trouble - the Spaniard also showing plenty of fight late on to fend off McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen.

While acknowledging that the possibility of an even better placing was compromised by the safety car - his Renault almost running out of fuel and then dropping down the order when the SC made its third appearance - Alonso fully recognised that, on the whole, events played into his hands.

And he warned that a haul of five world championship points might prove difficult to come by this coming weekend in Malaysia.

"I'm very happy with the result. All the simulations we did showed us in eighth or ninth and finishing fourth was unthinkable," Alonso told Spanish daily AS.

"It was a lot better than expected, but we can't forget that without the retirements we could have easily finished outside the points.

"We are very happy with fourth, but if we continue like this we are going to be disappointed. Maybe in Malaysia, if both Ferraris, BMWs and so on finish the race, we are going to be outside of the points."

Unusual

Having also found himself in the unusual position of missing out on the top-10 qualifying shoot-out, Alonso further urged Renault to improve their pace.

"That's why we have to do something immediately, try to improve in qualifying and get into Q3," he added.

"Then we must be better in the race. It's true that I had a lot of traffic and bad luck with the Safety Car, but in other circumstances we wouldn't have done so well and we need to improve that."