Fernando Alonso admitted that a few set-up changes made after the Sprint race helped him find more performance in qualifying.
Alonso was defending an incredible third place in the Sprint, but after making contact with Carlos Sainz, he suffered a puncture and retired. However, the Spaniard was showing good pace with his Aston Martin.
Despite that, he still preferred to make a few tweaks to his set-up, and that allowed him to go third-fastest in qualifying even though he made a mistake between turn 1 and 2.
“In sector one I had a moment in Turn 1 and 2 and I nearly lost the car,” Alonso said. “And then I said: ‘Okay, I keep going or I abort the lap? Because I lost like two-tenths in two corners. But we didn’t give up, we kept pushing all through the lap and set a good lap time.
“I think the car did improve since this morning, we made a few set-up changes. Let’s see tomorrow if we can translate that into good points,” he explained.
Alonso is not sure whether the new set-up will help him during the race, so the only thing to do is wait and see. Nonetheless, he is extremely happy and proud of the team.
“You cannot change the car completely because you are into the rhythm of the weekend, but you can still make some small setup changes. Some of them are just for balance problems, but some of them are just guesses that you do into tomorrow’s race, and you flip the coin.
“Until tomorrow afternoon we will not know the answer, but I’m extremely happy, and proud of the team. We are not giving up. We are not in the position we want yet but we keep pushing.”