BARCELONA, Spain -- Fernando Alonso insists he still has "zero regrets" about his decision to skip the Monaco Grand Prix in two weeks' time, despite a sudden return to form in qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix.
Alonso qualified his McLaren-Honda in a season-high seventh position at the Circuit de Catalunya on Saturday and enters the race with his best chance of points this year. He put the result down to a perfect lap on a track that helps mask Honda's power deficit, which bodes well for McLaren at the Monaco Grand Prix on one of the least power-sensitive circuits on the calendar.
But Alonso has chosen to race at Indianapolis instead of Monaco in two weeks, posing the question of whether he will miss out on one of his best points-scoring opportunities of the year.
"About Monaco, [I have] zero -- minus zero -- regrets," he said. "I will race the Indy 500, one of the best, or the biggest race in the world. There are six cars, two Mercedes, two Ferraris, two Red Bulls that will be unbeatable for the next couple of races so to fight for P7 in Monaco, no thanks."
Reliability has been one of McLaren's biggest weaknesses this year, but he is not going into Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix expecting a failure.
"I am more or less confident. Obviously I don't have 100 per cent confidence because in four races we have four DNFs. Friday was a difficult day also with another failure so you know, it's not that you go tomorrow and you are 100 per cent confident but I'm pretty sure that we keep learning with the things which are happening to the car so at least I have a good feeling for tomorrow.
"I said yesterday that some weekends start on a good way then everything goes in the wrong direction and some other weekends starts wrong and by whatever point of the weekend gets right -- I had that feeling yesterday. Today everything went right and I still have the feeling that tomorrow everything is going to be okay so I am confident on that."