A bravura effort from Fernando Alonso in Q1 saw him scrape over the line by the tiniest of margins to start one last flying lap. The Spaniard knew the track was drying and came in at the very last moment to don a set of slick tyres.
He then drove a stonking lap in Q1 on those slicks to be quickest of all by the hefty margin of 1.3 seconds. Just seeing his name at the top of the timesheets was worth all the grief the Spaniard has been through this season, and the British crowd's cheers were great for the entire team to hear at their home event, if it was short lived.
Fernando went on to set the 13th-fastest time in Q2,but, he will be starting from the back of the grid anyway owing to a 30-place grid penalty for PU component changes.
“We made the right call at the end of Q1 by switching to Option tyres. We took advantage of a track that was on the limit at that moment – and it was nice to hear people cheering,” Fernando said. “It's good for the guys in the garage as well: they deserve it as they have been working so hard these past couple of years, and, even if it's just for one moment, to be up there at the top of the time sheets feels good.”
“Not making it into Q3 allows us to choose our tyres for the race. We'll start last, owing to the penalties; starting on used Q2 tyres wouldn't have been ideal, so we're relatively happy with 13th. Now we need to think about tomorrow. We proved today that we're quite competitive in mixed conditions, so a wet/dry chaotic race could work in our favour. Hopefully it'll stay like this tomorrow, weather-wise.”
