Fernando Alonso has explained he faces a task he has described as “nearly impossible” in his attempt to salvage a crumb of home comfort this weekend.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
On the opening day of the Spanish Grand Prix weekend at the new Madring circuit in Madrid, Alonso’s FP2, in particular, was badly compromised by a clutch issue with his Aston Martin at the start of second practice he suffered following his practice starts at the end of FP1.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
As Alonso noted, the lack of early running in that session put him “out of sync”, and “a little bit behind the programme”, completing just 16 laps in contrast to a number of drivers who posted lap totals in the mid-20s.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Alonso eventually finished 17th quickest, offering a glimmer of hope he may qualify in Q2, albeit aided by the fact that McLaren’s Lando Norris failed to post a time due to his MCL60 encountering a gearbox problem which required a change.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Assessing what might be possible going into the race, the two-time F1 champion does not doubt that the imposing 22 corners of the Madring will mean “it’s going to be hard to overtake”.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
As for himself in the AMR26, he said: “For us, nearly impossible with the deficit on the straight, so qualifying will be important.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“At the same time, with the walls that close, the possibilities of a safety car or red flags, all these kinds of things, we need to stay focused. We need to see the chequered flag, do our own race.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“Whatever is the result in qualifying, I think there’s still hope for Sunday, if we do a perfect execution of the race.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tAlonso calls for ‘fix’ on ‘a couple of things<\/p>\n
Surprisingly, despite the pre-event suggestion there would be numerous incidents in the lead-up to the weekend given the tricky nature of the track, there was only one red flag across the two hours of practice running.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
That was sparked by Racing Bulls’ Arvid Lindblad 35 minutes into FP2 as he lost control of the rear of his car through the fast Turn 13 left-hander.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Traffic was also a problem, as Alonso discovered, and whilst he is confident of an improvement in qualifying, there are ongoing issues with the Honda power unit that will not aid his cause.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“It was tricky out there with the traffic, but it was our mistake to be out of sync,” said Alonso. “Tomorrow in quali should be better.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“But it’s going to be tricky to get it right, with tyre temperature and battery state of charge at the end of the lap, sometimes, if you do a different driving style in the last few corners, it seems that we are very sensitive to that with the Honda power unit.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“There are a couple of things that we are discovering, and we need to fix for sure.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fernando Alonso has explained he faces a task he has described as “nearly impossible” in his attempt to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":888461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-888460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}