Fernando Alonso was relatively positive about the outcome of Qualifying for the British Grand Prix, despite the Spaniard being forced to settle for a spot on the seventh row of the grid for Sunday’s race.
The McLaren F1 Team racer will start thirteenth on the grid but missed out on the top ten by almost three-tenths of a second, however Alonso feels the weekend at Silverstone has so far been good and his starting position offers him at least a chance of moving up to score points.
“This weekend in general has been good so far and qualifying has also proved to be okay,” said Alonso. “We’re still missing a couple of tenths, but P13, being close to the points zone and starting on the clean side was our target after all, and we reached that.
“Saturday seems to be our lowest point of the weekend, as we always seem to qualify around P13, but then we improve on Sundays, so let’s aim for that tomorrow and see how the race develops.”
Alonso says the team will need to keep their concentration if they want to score points on Sunday, although the Spaniard acknowledges he will need to manage his tyres well if he wants to make a one-stop strategy work for him.
“We know this track is demanding aerodynamically,” said Alonso. “It’s a very long circuit where you need both efficiency and power, so it’s quite complex, but we will fight tomorrow.
“The start will be crucial – here it’s difficult to follow other cars due to the high-speed corners, so positions on the first lap are quite important, and after that a good strategy and good tyre management. It’s quite warm, and for those on a one-stop strategy the degradation is going to be high, so we need to keep our concentration and hopefully we can score some points.”
