McLaren back in Q3 contention - Alonso

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.

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“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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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.