MELBOURNE (AFP) — Red Bull Renault may have the fastest cars in the early weeks of the Formula One season but it is another thing to win races, Ferrari rival Fernando Alonso said on Thursday.

German Sebastian Vettel was fastest in his Red Bull Renault in qualifying for the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix a fortnight ago, but Alonso led a Ferrari one-two at the chequered flag in the race to take first blood.

It was the Spanish two-time world champion’s debut for Ferrari since his switch from Renault, but he conceded the Red Bulls of Vettel and Australian Mark Webber are likely to be quicker in practice and qualifying this weekend.

The Red Bulls finished last season strongly with Vettel winning the Japan and Abu Dhabi GPs and Webber the Brazilian race as the team finished runners-up behind Brawn GP in the 2009 constructors title.

“I think Red Bull is ahead of everybody a little bit now which is not a surprise because they finished last season very strong,” Alonso told reporters.

“They have kept the momentum, but one thing is to be the fastest car and another thing is to win the race.”

Alonso, who won the world championship in 2005 and 2006 with Renault, has teamed with Brazilian Felipe Massa at Ferrari this year.

The Italian giants are bidding to overcome their abysmal 2009 campaign when they limped home in fourth place for their lowest season finish since 1993.

The Spaniard, who is driving for his third team in four years, took full advantage of Vettel’s mid-race loss of power with his Red Bull Renault car to snatch a great win in Bahrain and is keen to repeat the dose.

“We will try to push them again to the maximum and it will depend on circuit to circuit as we saw last year,” he said.

“Red Bull were sometimes very strong and other times they had difficulties, so hopefully here in Australia we can be strong and we can fight for the win.”

Alonso, who looks to be a more comfortable fit at Ferrari than he did when he teamed with Lewis Hamilton at McLaren for one fractious season in 2007, said tyre wear should not be a problem this weekend on the Melbourne street circuit.

“Last year it was very hard on the tyres here but this year the tyres are three or four times harder than they were last year, so it should be a little bit better than that,” he said.

“The track is usually very important here so if we have no rain and we have a normal weekend we will have less problems than we had in Bahrain.”