Alonso 'has work to do' after interrupted Friday sessions

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Fernando Alonso acknowledged that Aston Martin still had plenty of work to do heading into this weekend's Australian Grand prix, after a disrupted day of practice in Melbourne on Friday.

Alonso was quickest in the afternoon session with a time of 1:18.887s set before the rain picked up and made quicker laps impossible as teams switched to intermediate tyres.

His time wasn't as fast as Max Verstappen had gone in first practice, which has also been interrupted - in this case by two red flags, for a general circuit GPS system failure and a breakdown for Logan Sargeant's Williams.

Read also: Fernando Alonso tops wet Australian GP second practice

But despite the distractions, Alonso was pleased with how the day had gone as he bids to finish this weekend on the podium for the third race in succession.

“It was a good Friday for us and nice to be back in Australia," he reported after the end of the day's activity. "In FP1 we concentrated on some test items and ran through our programme smoothly.

"The afternoon was obviously impacted by the rain, so there is still some work to do tomorrow.

©AstonMartin

"We need to learn more about the tyres and the long run pace of the car because there was not much time for that today. So far though the car seems to behave well."

While all the drivers continued to run even after the rain soaked the track in order to get a feel for how the 2023 inters were handling, Alonso is hoping that tomorrow will see dry conditions to allow everyone to run their programs.

"The forecast tomorrow looks dry for now, and we would welcome that given we only experienced these conditions in the previous two races," he said.

His team mate Lance Stroll had a lively afternoon featuring several incidents, run-offs and near-misses. He survived all such moments, but was only 16th fastest in FP2 having been P10 in the first session.

"The car was feeling good and we used FP1 to test various new parts which gives us plenty of data to look through this evening as we continue to learn about the AMR23," he explained.

"We did not log as many laps as we would have liked during FP2 because of the rain, but it is something that all teams will have struggled with so I do not think it puts us at a disadvantage for the weekend ahead.

"Thankfully, the weather looks like it will improve tomorrow, but it has been fairly unpredictable today so you never know!”

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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.