Qualifying Still Our Achilles Heel: Alonso

McLaren-Renault driver Fernando Alonso has said that the team has their work cut out for them in the qualifying department. His comments come in the aftermath of finishing in a familiar P13 in Baku.

With Nico Hulkenberg’s penalty, Alonso will move up to P12. Despite that, McLaren are no match for fellow customers Red Bull or Renault.

“Qualifying still isn’t the strongest part of our weekend,” Alonso said. “But a lot usually happens during a street race, and at this track in particular.

“There’s no room for mistakes around this circuit: it’s very windy, dusty, the walls are very close, and you cannot push or over-drive the car.

“It’s also a mentally tough race, so I think tomorrow is going to be both crazy and fun at the same time.

“This weekend, we seem to have improved our top-speed compared to previous races, but we’ve also compromised some grip in the corners.

“Still, during Q2, the wind picked up a little, and we were losing speed along the straights due to the headwind.

“Tomorrow, that wind should be even stronger, so it’s going to be important to race among a group of cars to stay in the fight.

“This is the third time in a row where I’ve qualified 13th, and we normally seem to score good points from that position. 

“Hopefully tomorrow will be another one of those good days.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the garage, things were no better for Stoffel Vandoorne. The Belgian driver has struggled all weekend so far and will start down in P16.

“It’s been a bit of a tough weekend for me,” Vandoorne said.

“During practice, it seemed like, whenever I was on-track, I was in the wrong place, or encountered a yellow-flag at the wrong time. In fact, Q1 was probably the first session this weekend where I finally managed to complete a quick-lap.

“In the end, I was much happier with the car; we still lack a bit of top speed, so we really need to follow another car to benefit from their speed, and I missed out on that on my final lap.

“Still, our race performance looks better than qualifying. We’ve seen so many incidents under braking this weekend; and that’s a real strength of our car, it feels very good under braking, and that’s a key requirement for the race.

“I think we can pull together a good race performance tomorrow.”