F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Alonso targets points despite 0.8s deficit

Fernando Alonso says McLaren is losing "0.7s or 0.8s" on the straights in Baku but is still targeting points in today's Grand Prix of Europe.

A run of three consecutive Q3 appearances came to an end for Alonso on Saturday, with the Spaniard qualifying 14th after being hampered by yellow flags. While he says the Honda power unit deficit made a top ten start impossible on raw pace, Alonso is hopeful the race will provide opportunities to climb up to the points.

"The car is good when we are in the corners but on the straights we lose 0.7s or 0.8s, with the throttle fully open, so that’s very frustrating," Alonso said. "The lack of power is clear, obvious, and in circuits like this one we try to fight with the other cars but it won’t be easy.

"Maybe we can get a point, as I’ve seen many incidents, so it can happen that with a bit of luck you can find yourself in P6 or P7, so I’m really looking forward to the race.

"From where we start any incident, any Safety Car can only help. We can still get into the points if we get it all right, a good start, the best tyre choice for the start of the race, so I’m really itching to go."

Alonso complained over team radio about traffic management after being eliminated from qualifying on Saturday, but after reviewing the session felt McLaren was slightly unfortunate.

“On my final Q2 lap, there was a yellow flag at Turn 3 for around 15 seconds, which meant I couldn’t open the DRS, so I lost a couple of tenths. I also think we probably didn’t get everything right ourselves – we were a bit unlucky, because we encountered traffic and were out of sequence with the cars around us."

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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.