Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

McLaren making reliability progress at Suzuka

Fernando Alonso says McLaren made some progress with the reliability of its car during Friday's running ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix.

With rain throughout the day, both practice sessions saw teams only use the intermediate and full wet tyre at Suzuka, preventing them from working on race set-ups with the rest of the weekend forecast to be dry. While performance was not the focus for McLaren, Alonso says the team made use of the day to learn in other areas.

"For sure not too important a day, especially looking at the conditions for tomorrow and Sunday being dry," Alonso said. "The wet laps are not too representative in terms of how you prepare the car.

"I think we learned things in terms of reliability and things we wanted to test after Singapore. Some of the checks are done and tomorrow we will try to maximise third practice in the proper way."

And Alonso hopes to be able to reward the McLaren fans at Honda's home circuit at Suzuka.

"It’s fantastic. It’s obviously the home grand prix for Honda. Already, Japan is probably the best race in terms of fans and how they welcome F1 every year. Hopefully we can give them something back on Sunday."

REPORT: Kvyat edges Rosberg in wet FP2 at Suzuka

AS IT HAPPENED: Japanese Grand Prix FP2

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.