Fernando Alonso kicked off his Brazilian Grand Prix weekend in warm sunshine after the threat of afternoon rain subsided, however he was not completely happy with the balance and drivability of his MCL32, ending the day with a degree of head-scratching after the car proved reluctant to fall into its regular sweet-spot.
Fernando encountered a small PU issue at the start of the afternoon session, choosing to stop in the pit-lane as a precaution. The issue was promptly resolved by his mechanics with minimal delay to his run-plan.
Armed with plenty of data, our engineers will chew through the numbers this evening in a bid to get him back on track for Saturday's running.
“Today was more difficult than we'd expected,” he said. “We had some problems in the first session, then a PU pressure issue in the second session. We lost some valuable track time, and in the end we didn't manage to complete our programme.”
“We tried to carry out the priority items on our run-plan, and we're more or less happy with the outcome. There's still a little more to come from the car tomorrow – some tuning on the set-up – so we'll see what we can do. Times are very close here, and if it stays dry making it into Q3 is going to be tight. We'll have more chance if it rains.”
