Fernando Alonso is enduring a cruel end to his career on Formula 1 as McLaren struggled once again, this time in qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix in which both orange cars were way off the pace and slowest of the runners in the session at Suzuka.
But the double F1 World Champion was not surprised that he could only manage 18th on the grid, "We have the same car from Spain more or less so we are dealing with what we have."
"When we arrive at races like Singapore or Hungary we score points because the circuits are a little bit more challenging but at this type of circuit we will struggle."
Although Alonso ended the session six tenths up on Stoffel Vandoorne, he was 1.8 seconds shy of the pole-winning time and over a second down on Red Bull's Max Verstappen in the best Renault powered car.
"I think it was the maximum today," explained the veteran Spaniard. "This is the way it is. We’ve been slow all weekend so it was not a surprise that we were slow in qualifying."
"Let’s see what we can do tomorrow in the race but definitely it’s going to be tough. A tough weekend so far. We will still aim to take points because obviously, that’s important for the Constructors Championship. We will try to do our best."
"We were hoping for some rain or something on Sunday but apparently it’s completely dry tomorrow unfortunately but yeah the start, the strategy, but it seems we don’t have the pace to be in the points so, it’s going to be tough but if there’s an opportunity we will take it," added Alonso.
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