Fernando Alonso said his McLaren F1 Team “was a comfortable car to drive” after a very strong showing in both sessions on Friday at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Alonso finished seventh in the morning session and improved to sixth in the afternoon.
“Ours was a comfortable car to drive today – that’s always important on a street circuit, where you have to attack the corners and feel confident in the car,” said Alonso. Today, we had a that car performed well in all three sectors, each of which is fairly unique.
“This weekend’s updates were introduced in order to help deal with the circuit’s characteristics, and seem to be working as we expected.
“It feels like we’ve found a little bit of speed compared to the last few races, so I’m fairly happy, as we weren’t compromised in either the corners or the slow speed sector.”
Despite a good showing on in practice, the Spaniard knows it will be a tough ask to reach Q3 but admits it would not be a disappointment if he failed to make it.
“I was also a little lucky on my fast lap, running behind Nico [Hulkenberg] as he began his quick-lap, so I gained a couple of tenths in the final sector.
“It’s going to be as tough as ever to make it into Q3 tomorrow, but this is actually one of those races where you don’t really know if starting ninth or 10th is actually better than starting 11th or 12th, and getting a free choice of fresh tyre.”
