Fernando Alonso is aiming to delight his legion of home fans in Barcelona this weekend, and hopes to feed off their 'special energy' to bring home his first victory with Aston Martin.
Alonso has finished in the top four in the first six races of 2023, and was runner-up to championship leader Max Verstappen in last week's Monaco Grand Prix.
This time he's hoping to use his home advantage and support to go one better and claim what would be his first win in a decade - the last of which was here at this very same venue in 2013.
"I heard 67 per cent of the merchandise on the grandstand is green, which is amazing,” he beamed, comparing it to his heyday with Renault. “This is going back to the 2005, 2006, 2007 years, where everything was in one colour.
“I really feel that support, that special energy," he continued. "It was amazing at the fan forum this morning.
"While driving I cannot hear them, but I feel how enthusiastic they are, so hopefully we put in a good show for them.”
Alonso had a quiet start to the day and was just sixth fastest in FP1, but in the second practice he was back in his more familiar shotgun spot in second place, just 0.170s behind Verstappen.
But he's not getting carried away: “It’s so close over one lap that I think a couple of tenths will put you in a completely different position in the classification, so we won’t read too much into the times.
“We went through all the programme that we had before the free practice, which is a good thing, learning about the tyres," he said.
While he was in favour of the reprofiled final section of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, he was expecting more from it as the weekend went on.
"The track is a little bit slower than what we predicted, so there is still more time to find, more tweaks on the set-ups. But it was a productive Friday.”
Aston Martin continues to refine its package and this weekend is also the best opportunity teams have had to assess upgrades, after losing out on the opportunity of doing so at Imola due to the flooding in Emilia Romagna.
“There is not a new part that we put in the car that is not helping the performance," Alonso said. "That is something that has been always the case with the team from Bahrain.
"I’m happy with upgrades, and let’s see tomorrow, when everyone goes to full power, where we are.”
Hopefully Saturday will bring better fortunes for Alonso's team mate Lance Stroll who was only 18th quickest at the end of FP2.
"The focus of today has been running various new test items and evaluating the new Pirelli construction prototype tyres," the Canadian explained. "So that made for a couple of busy sessions on track.
"That’s given us a lot of data to work through tonight and hopefully we can find some more lap time ahead of qualifying as the car wasn’t quite where I wanted it.
"The field was incredibly tight in both sessions, so we know how important it is to find that pace and we’ll be working hard to do so.”
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