Alonso thrilled by Aston Martin’s “completely unexpected” qualifying performance

Fernando Alonso said Aston Martin out-performed his expectations after taking sixth on the grid for the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Having been downbeat after placing third in practice yesterday, Alonso predicted a more challenging session for the team. But afterwards he said “I feel great – I didn’t expect to be that competitive.”

“We found last year that sometimes in free practice we were running in a different engine mode or sometimes than others and in qualifying everything is a little bit more realistic,” he told Sky. “Now in qualifying to be in the mix in the same tenth of Ferrari and things like that is completely unexpected for us.”

Alonso was the only Aston Martin driver to reach Q3. Although he qualified one place lower than last year, he was five-thousandths of a second slower than Sergio Perez’s fifth-placed Red Bull and six-hundredths off beating George Russell to third place.

Starting from the third row of the grid, Alonso said a podium finish could be possible. “I think if you asked me yesterday, or one week ago, I would say that is 100% impossible. Now, I cannot say that anymore. So it is good news.”

However he predicted the narrow times between the front-running cars will make it difficult for drivers to look after their tyres in tomorrow’s race.

“I think it’s going to be difficult because, being so tight, I think it is going to be in a group of cars which obviously will damage the tyres even more when you are in traffic. So I think it’s going to be a question mark.”

His team mate Lance Stroll will start 12th after missing the cut for Q3 by 0.078 seconds. He said he encountered traffic at turn 13 on his final run in Q2.

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