Fernando Alonso spent most of the final morning of Formula 1 preseason testing at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya waiting for his McLaren crew to change another Renault power unit on the back of the MCL33, but when he got going the Spaniard got straight down to business as he racked up 93 laps and set the second fastest lap of the day in the process.
Alonso told reporters on Friday evening, “Today was a bit of a rollercoaster! This morning we had an engine issue which meant we couldn’t complete any of the morning programme, but the guys did a fantastic job once again to change everything on the car and get us ready as soon as possible.”
“We had a very good afternoon and compressed our full day’s schedule into the afternoon session. We managed to do everything we wanted and I’m quite happy with the result and the final day of testing.
“I think there’s more to come from the car in terms of performance and also of course with reliability, but now we have two important weeks back in the factory to prepare for the first race.”
“We will see exactly where we are in Australia when everyone is running with maximum performance, but I think it was a very productive two weeks of winter testing for us.
“We had a lot of new things to prove and test and now we have a couple of weeks to put everything in place. I’d like to say well done to the whole team for pushing hard, and now we’re all looking forward to going racing in Melbourne,” added Alonso.