Fernando Alonso is hoping he will not need to rely on another driver's misfortune as he bids for a second successive victory at the Australian Grand Prix this weekend.

The Spaniard made the perfect start to life with Ferrari as he won the season-opening race in Bahrain earlier this month.

In a race that failed to live up to expectation due to the lack of overtaking, Alonso made his move when early leader Sebastian Vettel suffered spark-plug failure in his Red Bull.

Felipe Massa finished second to cap a fine day for Ferrari but Alonso is hoping to qualify at the front of the grid at Albert Park, and said: "Hopefully here in Australia we can be strong and we can fight for the win. We were lucky enough to win after his (Vettel's) problem. Hopefully we can start in front of him and not need to wait for any problem."

Qualifying at the front will be easier said than done, however, with Vettel and team-mate Mark Webber likely to be challenging as well as both the McLarens and Mercedes.

And while Alonso admitted the Red Bulls currently have the edge over the rest of the field in terms of speed, he feels pace alone is not necessarily enough to win races.

"I think maybe performance-wise maybe Red Bull is a bit ahead of everybody now, which is not a surprise because they finished 2009 very strongly, so they kept the momentum," he added. "But one thing is to be the fastest car and another thing is to win the race.

"At the beginning (in Bahrain) I was not able to attack because (Vettel) was definitely quicker than me with the soft tyres.

"Then with the hard tyres it seemed that I was a little bit more comfortable, but maybe he was controlling that part of the race or something - it's always difficult to say.

"I think we need a couple of races to understand the picture better. We will try to push them again, and it will depend also circuit to circuit."