In a bizarre turn of events, Fernando Alonso went from being a zero in front of his home fans after the First Free Practice session where he retired after three laps to, to a hero after managing to drag his McLaren Honda to a fantastic 7th position.

“Everything went today perfect or even better than what we thought,” Alonso said with a big smile on his face, “It’s a nice surprise to be in Q3 and P7.

“It was definitely a good qualifying for us and P7 is a gift. We’ll see what we can do from here.

“Today we put everything together,” he continued. “I felt confident with the car. Conditions are quite tricky, quite windy there. But my car was always giving me the confidence that I was able to push 100 per cent.

“Happy for that, happy for the team as well.

“They work so much, they change to many power units in these first races,” he continued. “To be now P7 to be on the grid around the cars that we should be fighting for the top positions will be a nice boost for all the guys.”

This is his last race before he heads to the West in an attempt to win the Indy 500. The qualifying result is a sign of relief for Honda considering the Spaniard has been much vocal about Honda’s miseries lately. Many F1 pundits have argued that he seems to have lost his motivation to continue which was evident considering he went to play Tennis after his retirement on Friday.

Alonso further added, “Always here, I find this extra motivation to take care of every detail of the car, of the wind direction, of the tyres, etc. It’s always a good Grand Prix for me, but the race is tomorrow – they don’t give points on Saturday.

“We have to prepare a good race strategy, a good start tomorrow, and execute it well and take some points.

“We’ll see. I think this is a circuit where it’s difficult to overtake, so we’ll try and get a position.”