Fernando Alonso hopeful for wet qualifying at Silverstone despite 'lost' FP1 session

Even though FP1 was a “lost session”, Fernando Alonso can foresee good things if the weather forecast is correct for Saturday’s running at Silverstone.

Wet weather for first practice discouraged the teams from risking their cars as they looked to gather data for the weekend, and rain is expected at Silverstone on Saturday also with uncertain conditions ahead.

Alpine were one of several teams boasting upgrades for the British Grand Prix weekend, with an updated floor being run on the A522 as they look to close the gap to those in front.

Alonso admitted there was not much to garner from the first two practice sessions but was pleased with what he had been able to do in FP2 – ranking sixth in the dry conditions on Friday afternoon while his team-mate Esteban Ocon’s session was interrupted with a sidepod issue, being left down in P12.

“Not much, to be honest,” Alonso told the media when asked what he could take from Friday’s running. “We would love to have more time on track.

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“FP1 was a little bit of a lost session for everyone, so we tried to focus the job on FP2. But you always discover a few things with a new package that you will like to fix and keep running, but the time is down quite quickly.

“But it’s the way it is for everybody and we were quite happy with the performance of the car. So let’s see tomorrow what we can get.”

Should the weather be against the drivers on Saturday, Alonso found optimism in what could be tricky conditions – pointing to his previous record in the rain in qualifying this season.

“At the moment the weather looks quite bad for FP3. So if it’s like that, it will be a challenging weekend but it’s the same for everybody,” he said.

“We got the info we needed today, and then tomorrow if it’s wet, let’s see if we get some runs in FP3 just in preparation for qualy that could be wet as well.

“Imola and Canada where we had wet qualifying [sessions] we were P2 and P5. So we seem quite okay – so I approach the weekend quite optimistic.”

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