Alonso delighted with unexpected fifth place

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Fernando Alonso admitted that he hadn't been expecting to finish as high up as fifth place in the United States Grand Prix on Sunday, especially as McLaren has been struggling to find pace at the Circuit of the Americas all weekend.

"No, I didn't expect it," he said. "Obviously it was a very good race, a very good result for us. We took advantage from Kimi and Verstappen DNFs.

"The pace was not good all weekend long, and wasn't good in the race, but enough to be close to the guys in front and then we differed the strategy with Toro Rosso

"They fit the soft, we fit the medium, so we had better tyre life at the end of the race and we took advantage from that."

The difference in tyre strategy meant that the end of the race featured a thrilling battle over fifth place between Alonso, Carlos Sains and Williams' Felipe Nasr.

“Carlos was on a different strategy and different tyres to me and Felipe, which allowed us to close the gap," he explained. "“Our tyres were in better condition than the Toro Rosso’s and we took advantage of that.

"The last couple of laps were very intense, as we had some extra speed so we tried hard to overtake. It was quite easy to overtake the Toro Rosso as they’re slow on the straights, so you just need to open the DRS.

"I was following Carlos for 45 laps and he drove very well, very consistently, zero mistakes – so we had a great battle.

Alonso's overtaking move on Massa was somewhat more bruising and was investigated after the race by the race stewards. Although they agreed with Alonso that it was a racing incident and that no further action was warranted over the incident, the Williams team was still angry after Massa was left with a puncture.

None of that was about to spoil Alonso's day, however, although he remained realistic about McLaren's performance heading into next weekend's Mexican Grand Prix.

“Our result today is nice for motivation, so I’m happy with fifth, but we gained a couple of positions because of other people going out, and our pace hasn’t been great all weekend here, so we need to understand the reasons for that.”

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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.