Alonso hails qualifying lap as ‘beautiful’
Fernando Alonso says his qualifying performance for his home grand prix was a ‘nice surprise’ after taking his McLaren into Q3 for the first time this season.
The Spaniard, who has failed to see the chequered flag so far in 2017, extracted the maximum potential out of the car to secure his best grid slot since last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
Alonso had suffered an oil leak at the beginning of the weekend but turned around the team’s misfortunes – and despite his lap being good enough for P7, the former world champion is remaining realistic.
“It was a good qualifying for us and P7 is a gift, so we’ll see what we can do tomorrow,” said Alonso.
“As I said yesterday, sometimes the weekends start the wrong way but then they fix themselves, and vice versa. The important thing is tomorrow, to try to get a few points.
“But today was a beautiful day, a beautiful qualifying in which we were finding tenth after tenth. Then surprisingly we made it into Q3, and we had another very good lap.”
The double world champion adds the support in the grandstands gave him an extra boost around the lap and now hopes for a trouble-free race having not finished in Spain since 2014.
“It was better than expected but the support from the people gives you a few extra tenths,” he said.
“In the end, you never know when you are going to have a problem. We’ve had too many this year and some have come as a surprise, so let’s hope tomorrow is not that day and that we can grab a few points.”