Fernando Alonso says he is "pleasantly surprised" by the running completed on Friday in Australia, despite the two sessions taking place in wet conditions.
The Spaniard was seventh in FP1 and set the sixth quickest time in FP2. He says McLaren almost completed its programme but failed to complete a few plans due to the lack of dry running.
"I think we’re feeling quite happy after today," he said. "It’s nice to be back here in Melbourne: sometimes, when you come away from testing and go to a different circuit, you receive a pleasant surprise… or an unpleasant surprise.
"Well, today, we received a pleasant surprise. We more or less completed our programme – there were a few things we couldn’t quite accomplish, because we didn’t have enough dry running, but it was the same for everyone and we’ll hopefully run through our braking and ride-height checks tomorrow."
His team-mate Jenson Button was eighth and seventh in the two sessions respectively: "This wasn’t the easiest day on which to run race cars – even if it had been dry, those 50km/h winds made things very tricky, and the early rain made them trickier still.
"In fact in conditions like we saw today, when it’s wet and windy, you can lose control of the car very easily, so I hope tomorrow will be a lot calmer to be honest.
"Having said that, we still managed to trial some engine and ride-height settings. We’d like to have tried even more, but there was little point in such bad weather conditions. All in all, though, I definitely think we made the best of today."
Discussion about this post