Fernando Alonso says McLaren is back in contention for a place in Q3 in qualifying at the United States Grand Prix.
McLaren struggled in Japan two weeks ago, with Jenson Button dropping out in Q1 and Alonso in Q2 before both drivers finished outside the top 15 in the race. However, a more encouraging Friday in Austin saw both cars within the top ten in FP2 and Alonso believes McLaren can improve its car to ensure it challenges for the same positions in qualifying later today.
“It was a good day, we managed to complete our programme without any issues, so we could do a lot of laps and that was quite useful," Alonso said. "In FP2 we tried both types of tyres and here we really have to be on our toes because it looks like the supersoft suffer a lot from degradation, but it was a very useful day, so now we have a lot of information to go through and then make the right choices for the rest of the weekend.
"We didn’t run the supersofts in the morning because we don’t have a lot of sets from that compound, just the soft and the medium, but in the afternoon we had to run them and it was not a surprise their degradation was high. But you still have to confirm it by running, so that’s what we did.
"We tried a lot of different things in the car – aero, suspension, etc. – and some worked better in FP1 while others were better in FP2. Now we have to get the package right and grab a couple of tenths that are within our reach. Hopefully that will be enough to put us in contention for a place in Q3."
Team-mate Button says the high levels of degradation should make the race itself more unpredictable.
"Degradation was pretty normal, when you bring the supersoft to a circuit that we’re not used to run in degradation is pretty high but that’s normal," Button said. "But there’s degradation on all compounds, even the medium are overheating very quickly, they’re not as consistent as you would have liked it, considering it’s the medium compound, so it’s tough with all the tyres. But that definitively makes things more interesting."
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