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Alonso looking forward to attacking race from back of grid

Fernando Alonso says he is looking forward to driving an attacking race as a result of starting from the back of the grid at the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Honda introduced a new power unit on Alonso's car for Friday practice, resulting in a 30-place grid penalty. With the Spaniard already starting from the back of the grid, he then was handed a further 15-place grid penalty for two more new power unit components, and as a result focused on race pace throughout Saturday and was slowest in qualifying.

With Jenson Button qualifying ninth quickest, Alonso - who was in the top ten throughout Friday - admits he is excited by the prospect of fighting through the field.

“Yeah, definitely, we’re looking forward," Alonso said. "Yesterday the car seemed to respond well, P5 in FP1, P7 in FP2, so definitely feeling OK this weekend. Some new tyres tomorrow to exploit the potential of the car so we’ll try and do a good race.

"I think a points finish is an ambitious target but still possible depending on what happens in front of us as well and how the first laps go in our favour. But I think we are ready to really enjoy it because the pace is there and exploiting the new tyre advantage hopefully we can recover places.”

When asked for his thoughts about the Honda power unit upgrade, which he will race in Japan having reverted to an old specification on Saturday, Alonso replied: “Well the upgrade is more for better reliability, so the performance should be the same.”

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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.