Fernando Alonso: “We still need to do some work to fine tune the set-up of the car”

Fernando Alonso made amends from missing first practice at the Red Bull Ring by placing inside the top eight in the afternoon, with the Alpine F1 Team driver feeling there is still more to come this weekend.

The veteran Spaniard sat out the opening session as Alpine gave test driver Guanyu Zhou an opportunity behind the wheel of the A521, but despite this, he was able to break into the top ten in the afternoon, 0.870 seconds behind pacesetter Lewis Hamilton.

Alonso says experiencing Pirelli’s softest compound of tyre in Austria, a tyre that was not available seven days ago within the Styrian Grand Prix, was good, and he hopes the team can fine tune their car overnight in a bid to be competitive in Qualifying on Saturday.

“It was good to be back in the car this afternoon especially with the C5 tyre compound, that we didn’t have last weekend,” said Alonso.  “It was good to try some laps on them on both short runs and long runs.

“I think that we still need to do some work to fine tune the set-up of the car; with this tyre compound, maybe, we have a different balance. It was quite a smooth FP2 for us and there’s more to come tomorrow hopefully.”

“All in all, a busy, but productive day” – Esteban Ocon

Team-mate Esteban Ocon was unable to match Alonso in the afternoon session, with the Frenchman ending twelfth fastest, 0.134 seconds back on the Spaniard.

Ocon says his day was very busy, but also productive, as he completed a lot of tests around the Red Bull Ring, and he hopes overnight work will enable him to break into the top ten on Saturday.

“It’s been a very busy day with lots of different tests completed,” said Ocon. “We had the prototype tyre to test out and that was interesting.

“We also ran the C5s, Softs, which is different to what we had last weekend with the C4. We did some valuable runs on those on both low and high fuel. The conditions were also a lot different to last weekend, much cooler, so the lap-times were a little quicker.

“The long runs were in line with what we expected too, and there’s more work required tonight to analyse that. All in all, a busy, but productive day.”

Esteban Ocon was unable to break into the top ten in either session on Friday – Credit: Alpine F1 Team