Fernando Alonso felt he qualified higher than he expected to in Qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix, but felt track conditions became too wet to improve in the closing stages of Q2 on Saturday.
The McLaren F1 Team racer believed it may have been difficult to escape Q1 at the Hungaroring had conditions been completely dry, but with each phase of Qualifying become progressively wetter as thunderstorms swept across the circuit, his ambitions rose as he did make it through Q1, only to miss out on Q3 when Intermediates no longer were the required tyre to be quick.
He bolted on a set of Full Wets for one last attack, but the final sector in particular was too wet to improve his earlier time, and he was eliminated, alongside Daniel Ricciardo, Nico Hülkenberg, Marcus Ericsson and Lance Stroll.
“The conditions were very difficult today and in these situations you need to have a bit of luck and be on track at the right time,” said Alonso, who once again out-qualified team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne, who was eliminated in Q1 to start sixteenth. “We haven’t been very competitive this weekend and in Q1 we were already a bit concerned that we wouldn’t make it through to Q2.
“Thanks to the rain we managed to get to P11, which is a good place, close to the points zone. Starting positions here are quite important and we are probably further up than we thought we would be.
“At the end of Q2 the heavy rain was affecting the last part of the track, so we decided to attempt another run on extreme Wet tyres, knowing that we would probably be slower, but we tried anyway.”
