Fernando Alonso insists that he isn’t disappointed to have qualified only fifth in Barcelona, despite the Ferrari having looked like the fastest car for much of the weekend.
Alonso expects to show a stronger performance relative to the opposition on Sunday.
“I think this is the maximum of what we have at the moment in our hands,” he said. “We cannot compete today with Mercedes again for qualifying, it’s their third consecutive pole position. We know that the race pace is maybe a little bit better for us, so we need to wait for our opportunities tomorrow.
“We need to have a clean start, a good first lap, and then a good strategy, because tyre degradation will again be very high, and so important, so we need to be on top of that problem.
“I feel confident. The car felt good yesterday, I felt competitive. Historically Sunday has been our best day of the weekend, so no reasons not to be on the podium tomorrow. But we want to be something more than just on the podium, so we’ll see what we can do.”
Alonso admitted that he gets a special buzz in front of his home crowd.
“Yeah of course, there is always extra motivation when you race in front of everybody. But at the end of the day the car is as fast as it is always, here or in another circuit. We’ll try to do well tomorrow and give some happiness to everyone.”
Adam Cooper F1 