Fernando Alonso says Ferrari refused to take any gambles in Saturday's qualifying for the Brazilian GP, resulting in yet another "expected" eighth place.
Needing to beat Sebastian Vettel by 14 points this Sunday to secure the 2012 Drivers' Championship, Alonso was left facing an uphill battle after once again struggling for one-lap pace.
The double World Champ, who has only three front row starts to his credit this season, brought his F2012 home with a 1:13.253.
And that was only good enough for eighth place on the Interlagos grid, four places behind Vettel.
Alonso, though, is refusing to write off his chances of turning that into the podium finish he needs to even stand a chance.
"Ninth in USA and eighth here so more or less as I expected," said the Spaniard.
"I will try to achieve the podiums which we achieved in Abu Dhabi and Austin we achieved from those positions.
"So, an interesting race. Obviously we need some strange circumstances, we need a chaotic race in a way, with rain affecting it or something. Let's hope we see something like that.
"Maybe the rain can help, but you never know. We need to push the maximum to enjoy tomorrow's race, and as I said, try to be in the podium."
The Ferrari driver also downplayed the difference between wet or dry set-up.
"Nothing changes in our days. I think F1 now is dominated by aerodynamics, the only thing you can change is you can put more downforce or less downforce on the car.
"We ran with maximum downforce in the dry and obviously it's the same in the wet, so no big changes, or no one jumped today for a wet set-up, because there's minimum changes."
As for his team boss, Stefano Domenicali admits P8 is "not the perfect position to start the race tomorrow."
However, he reckons that with a "lot of concentration and working hard and we will see what the outcome is in the race.
"Anything is possible then, it will be an interesting Sunday."
There is an 80 percent chance of heavy rain in Sunday's 71-lap Brazilian GP.
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