“After a run of difficult races for us, I’m not sure what we can expect from this weekend” – Alonso
Fernando Alonso says he can’t approach his home Formula 1 race with any particular goal until McLaren-Honda solves its unreliability woes over a race distance.
The two-time F1 world champion returns to the venue of his last race win four years ago at Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona and says he always loves the ‘very special feeling’ racing in front of his home fans but is yet to technically see the chequered flag in any of the opening four races in 2017.
After a double retirement in Australia and China, Alonso pitted with a technical issue three laps from the finish in Bahrain and worse was to follow when a mechanical fault meant he missed start of the Russian Grand Prix.
With this in mind, Alonso hopes McLaren-Honda’s new parts go some way to curing its unreliable power unit in Spain in order to competitively finish a race for the first time in 2017.
“After a run of difficult races for us, I’m not sure what we can expect from this weekend,” Alonso said. “We’re expecting some various new parts – which we bring to every race – but we can’t really focus too much on performance until we have solved our reliability issues. That’s always our focus.
“I know the team is working extremely hard to get to the bottom of our recent problems, and I am hopeful we can have a smooth race and a weekend with very few issues.
“For me, qualifying has been an exciting session in the past few races and I hope we can repeat that in Barcelona, but the most important thing will be to maximise whatever grid slot we achieve on Saturday, on race day.”
Alonso’s home race represents his final F1 event ahead of his rookie outing at the Indianapolis 500, which he is racing at instead of the Monaco Grand Prix, but he is still relishing the chance to race in front of his local support and at a circuit he has won twice at.
“It’s my home race, I’ve had some great times there, and the atmosphere is always crazy,” he said. “We spend a lot of time there in pre-season testing, but there’s nothing quite like the emotion of racing there in front of your home fans. It’s a very special feeling.”
source: Haydn Cobb, crash.net
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