Alpine boosted by 'solid, productive' practice in Spain

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Alpine F1 was happy with a solid day of testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Friday, in the first day of practice for this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix.

The French squad is hoping to keep the momentum going after Esteban Ocon finished last week's Monaco GP on the podium in third place alongside Red Bull's Max Verstappen and Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso.

But the team is not getting carried away by its recent breakthrough success after a somewhat faltering start to the season, and is determined to take a calm and steady approach to this weekend's race.

Read also: Verstappen continues to set the pace in Spain second practice

“It was a productive Friday here," reported Ocon. "We used both free practice sessions well, testing different things and getting through our planned programme.

"We made the necessary changes from free practice 1 to free practice 2, but there is still some work to do to get the car in decent shape both on low and high fuel.

"Overall we are satisfied with the day’s work, with plenty to go through tonight in order to be in a good position for qualifying.”

“I would say it’s been a solid day for us in Barcelona," agreed his team mate Pierre Gasly. " The car felt good and we’ve made a decent start to our weekend which has given us a foundation to build from for the rest of the weekend.

"It’s been good to be back at a permanent race track and a nice challenge with the revised circuit layout without the chicane, which makes the lap feel very quick.

"There’s a few small things for us to solve on our side – normal for any Friday – and I’m feeling confident that we can have a strong outcome tomorrow for qualifying where we aim for another Q3 appearance.”

Alpine's head of trackside engineering Ciaron Pilbeam agreed with Gasly that it was good to get back to a permanent track facility after a string of road races in the likes of Baku, Miami and Monaco.

"We’re back on a permanent and conventional circuit here in Barcelona after racing at the last few events on semi-permanent or street circuits," he commented.

"It’s a place everyone in Formula 1 knows well and it’s a good venue for testing all aspects of the car," he said. "We look to be in reasonable shape with both drivers having similar feedback and showing decent pace.

"We’ve had a relatively productive day where we’ve aimed to further validate the benefits from recent upgrades and continue to learn more about the car, especially off the back of a strong performance last time out.

"It’s important to qualify well here, but tyre degradation in the race is quite high, too, so we need to get everything right. The aim is to see both cars in Q3 to put ourselves in the best possible position to have a good race.”

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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.