If anyone ever doubted how good Fernando Alonso really is, they would have been enlightened by his mighty performance during qualifying for his home Spanish Grand Prix.
The Spaniard endured a frustrating Friday in which his McLaren came to a halt after a few corners in FP1 due to yet another Honda failure. Then in FP2 he was slowest of all.
Things got better in the Satruday morning FP3 session, as he ended tenth fastest on the timing screens.
A couple of hours later he was simply stellar as he wrestled the greatly under-powered and finicky McLaren to seventh on the grid to a standing ovation and the amazement of everyone in the paddock.
In Q1 Alonso was half a second faster than his highly rated rookie teammate Stoffel Vandoorne. By Q1 he had found another second.
“Running in the ovals maybe I learned how to go quick on the straights as well!” he joked afterwards. “It was definitely a good qualifying, P7 is a gift so we will see what we can do from here.”
“In a way it is a surprise. We qualified 13th as the highest this year so yesterday was very wrong from the beginning, so today being here in Q3 was a surprise.”
Asked if the his final lap in Q1 ranked with one of his best ever qualy laps, he replied, “Yeah probably. How we build the speed from Q1, 1m22.0 to 1m 21.0, that second is just getting confidence and risking more without a bad surprise from the car.”
“Thanks to the team, they have been working very hard, changing a lot of power units every day basically so to be in Q3 and P7 we feel we are in the positions we should be is a nice motivation and boost for the team as well.”
“I think the car yesterday performed quite well even if we had the strange FP1 and FP2 with not much running. The upgrades are working fine but I felt fine with the car. The people always giving this extra motivation and extra tenths, half of this Q3 is because of them,” concluded the double F1 World Champion.
Read the full story at GRAND PRIX 247
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