Alonso and Ocon happy with latest Alpine upgrades at Baku

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Alpine's Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon were both sounding happy with the progress made by the team heading into this weekend's Azerbaijan Grand prix in Baku.

The A522 was sporing a number of upgrades on Friday which seemed to be paying off, with Alonso finishing the day fourth fastest behind Charles Leclerc, Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen.

And Ocon confirmed the pace of the car on this tricky street circuit, joining his team mate in also finishing inside the top ten in both FP1 and FP2.

Read also: Leclerc ahead of Perez and Verstappen in Baku FP2

“We are happy with our work today," reported sporting director Alan Permane. "We brought some upgrades to Baku and everything seems to be working very well.

"The drivers are reasonably happy with the cars and there are still improvements to make of course," he acknowledged. "The two sessions ran as planned, very smoothly. We did our tyre work and have a good understanding on how the car is working, both on high and low fuel.

"The wind plays a part here, it can be very gusty and can catch the drivers out as we saw a few times especially around the last couple of corners that are very tricky with a tailwind."

"It's always tricky here in Baku with the windy and fast circuit conditions," agreed Alonso. "But I think we had a normal Friday today and we were able to test some of our new items.

"We still need to optimise a few things on the setup of the car ahead of qualifying tomorrow," he continued. "We seem fast on the straights and it’s sometimes a setup compromise with this type of circuit.

"However we seem fast today, so we’ll work overnight to ensure we keep this sort of pace tomorrow."

“It was a decent day for us overall," confirmed Ocon. "The car seems competitive after today, so that’s good to see,

"Baku is a place where you really need to make the most of these practice sessions and get the laps in. Confidence is key around here, similar to Monaco, and there are many braking points that you need to hit properly."

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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.