Seventh on the grid 'a gift' for Alonso in home race

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When Fernando Alonso's McLaren ground to a halt minutes after leaving pit lane for the first time on Friday, it looked like the start of another grim weekend for the team.

But a little over 24 hours later and the team was celebrating an unlikely success, with Alonso qualifying for his home race in seventh position. It will be his first top ten start of 2017.

"Everything went today perfect or even better than what we thought," Alonso beamed after qualifying at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunnya. "It's a nice surprise to be in Q3 and P7.

"It was definitely a good qualifying for us and P7 is a gift. We'll see what we can do from here.

"Today we put everything together," he continued. "I felt confident with the car. Conditions are quite tricky, quite windy there. But my car was always giving me the confidence that I was able to push 100 per cent.

"Happy for that, happy for the team as well.

"They work so much, they change to many power units in these first races," he continued. "To be now P7 to be on the grid around the cars that we should be fighting for the top positions will be a nice boost for all the guys."

Qualifying: Hamilton beats Vettel to pole position in Spain

The Spanish Grand Prix will be Alonso's final race before he heads to Indianapolis for his maiden attempt at running the Indy 500. He's already been practising on ovals and completed rookie orientation at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

"Running in the ovals, maybe I learned how to go quicker on the straights as well," he quipped.

Alonso agreed that racing in his home race before his adoring fans had been a big boost to him this weekend.

"Always here, I find this extra motivation to take care of every detail of the car, of the wind direction, of the tyres, etc.

"It's always a good Grand Prix for me, but the race is tomorrow - they don't give points on Saturday.

"We have to prepare a good race strategy, a good start tomorrow, and execute it well and take some points.

"We'll see. I think this is a circuit where it's difficult to overtake, so we'll try and get a position."

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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.