Fernando Alonso had yet another difficult start to a Grand prix weekend on Friday when in the opening ninety minute free practice session for the Spanish Grand prix, the home hero suffering an engine problem which saw him to stop out on track at Turn Two on his first lap out of the garage. Feeling the frustration already, Alonso walked away from the smoking McLaren and actually left the circuit and returned to his hotel room until the second session started.
In that time, the team elected to change the power unit, and the mechanics worked extremely hard to get Fernando back out on track shortly after the start of FP2. However, that too was a struggle for the former champion as he completed 21 laps but was unable to find any rhythm or pace, and could only manage the 20th fastest time.
He also managed a sarcastic quip over the team radio about how much slower the engine was than normal.
“Obviously, it's not an ideal start to the weekend as we completely missed the first practice session because of an engine problem. At least I managed to get some training done – when I heard I had two hours before the next commitment I decided to do just that. I've had very little time in the last few weeks to train, and my dedication is still 100 per cent on my fitness and my preparation,” he duly said to the press.
“The poor show in the afternoon session was due to the fact that first of all, you need to calibrate the engine when you put in a new power unit, so in the first couple of runs the power was a little bit inconsistent. We ran out of time, so we put on a new set of tyres even though not everything was calibrated. Towards the end of the session, when we put in more fuel and we were running in similar conditions to everyone else, we were doing more or less the lap time we were expecting, close to our main competitors for the race.”
“I feel confident that tomorrow, when we'll put everything together, we'll be in a more or less competitive position and hopefully we can be close to the others.”
