On a warm and sunny morning in Montreal, McLaren Honda driver Fernando Alonso enjoyed a trouble-free FP3, allowing him to execute his run plans as scheduled and conduct the necessary final evaluations and set-up tweaks before qualifying.
Fernando completed a total of 18 laps, finishing the session in 12th before conducting pit-stop simulations.
By qualifying, track temperatures had risen by a further six degrees.
The Spaniard started Q1 smoothly and was already comfortably through to Q2 when he was forced to abort his last lap due to an incident with Pascal Wehrlein. He finished the session in 10th place.
In Q2, he completed two runs of two laps each, and was lucky not to encounter any traffic on either run and will start Sunday's race from 12th on the grid.
“I think what we achieved in today's qualifying was the maximum we could have hoped for. I'm happy with our performance – it was probably a bit quicker than we expected, actually, considering our power deficit."
"We're in P12, not ideal position to start from, but I think our time compared to the pole time here is quite competitive for us. Obviously, we'd like to be further forward, but I believe we maximised the potential today with a good, clean lap,” he said.
“The car has felt great so far. It's been fun out there today, and the level of grip is very high. Even though the tyres are difficult to warm up, they're very consistent and you can push throughout the run, so I think it's going to be an interesting race.”
“The key to tomorrow's race will be performance and reliability, as always. We'll have to do some fuel saving and keep an eye on engine cooling, so it won't be easy. But the first priority tomorrow will be to finish the race, and, if we can be in the points, that'll be great.”
