Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Alonso frustrated after best lap of career at Suzuka

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Fernando Alonso has described his qualifying lap ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix as his "best lap" at Suzuka, which makes dropping out in Q2 "frustrating".

With McLaren still struggling for performance on Honda's home circuit, Alonso says it was "a little gift" even to reach the second part of qualifying as Jenson Button dropped out in Q1. However, with his lap only good enough to be 14th quickest, Alonso says it is a shame such a strong lap is not rewarded with a better result.

"I told the guys this is probably my best lap around here of my career so they could put 100 sets of tyres here for the afternoon and repeat the lap and I could probably not repeat the lap times," Alonso said.

"It is frustrating, no doubt, but it is the situation and everyone is doing their best and working hard to improve the situation. It is not that we are relaxing or not giving the maximum effort – that’s encouraging and we have to be patient."

And Alonso is not targeting points in Sunday's race, saying he is probably out of position in terms of the pace of some cars which are starting behind him.

"It will be tough, no doubt. I think there are people behind who are also faster – [Max] Verstappen and Sauber, probably, in the race situation – so it will be a tough race but we will do our best and hopefully have some miracles to get some points."

REPORT: Rosberg takes pole after huge Kvyat crash

AS IT HAPPENED: Japanese Grand Prix Qualifying

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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.