Fernando Alonso was one of the stars of Saturday’s sprint qualifying for the Formula 1 British Grand Prix – the two-time world champion made an impressive first lap and ended up seventh.
Friday’s trial wasn’t good for the Spaniard, so he could only have started from eleventh, but he immediately worked his way up to fifth in the opening round – thanks to Risking the soft tyres, the 17 lap race started.
Alonso was ultimately unable to rein in McLaren’s Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo, but You feel you might be happy with the seventh place.
“We won four places and I think we made a good decision,” said the two-time world champion.
“The start was great, the first lap was great. The deterioration was more significant on the soft tyres, but we didn’t get to the point where the car was unruly.”
Alonso says it wasn’t even a sprint race for him – He’d rather have a marathon!
“It was very intense. 4-5 seconds or a minute was very intense at first and followed by a very long sprint for me! I know it’s called a sprint qualification, but to me it was like a marathon.”
“I came out a bit out of position, fifth doesn’t reflect our real pace on the court. So we had to give up on McLaren, but Sebastian [Vettel] I was able to keep it behind me and it would be a great seventh place for Sunday.”
“I think we have a tough race ahead, only because the medium tires deteriorated quite properly. So a long race awaits everyone.”
