After a strong start to the Sprint Race in China, the session eventually turned out horribly for Fernando Alonso. Having jumped to 2nd place behind Lewis Hamilton at the start, Alonso fell to third when reigning champion Max Verstappen overtook the front-runners for the lead. And despite his brave efforts to salvage a podium finish, a late clash with Carlos Sainz meant that he had to retire the car due to a puncture, also incurring a 10-second penalty in the process.

It was evident that Alonso was out of position in the race with a much faster Red Bull of Sergio Perez and the two Ferraris charging behind him for much of the Sprint. However, during the qualifying session that followed, Alonso showed that his grid position in the Sprint was not helped by rain on the previous day as the Spanish driver once again qualified his Aston Martin 3rd on the grid.

While the car underneath Alonso is strong at qualifying, he admitted in the FIA post-qualifying press conference that they don’t have the race pace to match the Ferraris and McLarens. When asked if he expects to fall behind during the race on Sunday, Alonso responded, “Yeah, I expect a difficult race. I mean, we are slower than the Ferraris, slower than the McLarens, and probably the Mercedes.“

“We are out-qualifying them often and then in the race we just need to wait and see. When they come, how fast they come and how many laps we can defend those positions,” he added. “But it happened so far in the first four races, so I guess this fifth race is going to be no different. So yeah, I expect a race that is going to be difficult for us. But you know, we can’t say sorry for being too fast in qualifying, so let’s take it.“

While Alonso did out-qualify ahead of the cars that were faster than him, he wasn’t even sure if he should complete his final push lap in Q3.

Fernando Alonso thought about scraping the lap that got him P3

The revised Sprint Weekend format in 2024 has allowed the teams to make adjustments to the cars in between the Sprint race and the final qualifying session of the weekend. After securing P3, Fernando Alonso spoke about how Aston Martin had used the time in between the sessions to improve the car for the race on Sunday.

“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,” said Alonso. However, he also recalled thinking about aborting the final lap that got him to P3 after making a mistake in the first sector of the lap.

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“In sector one I had a moment in Turn 1 and 2 and I nearly lost the car,” he added. “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.”

How long do you think Fernando Alonso will be able to keep the Ferraris and the McLarens behind him during the Grand Prix tomorrow? Share your race predictions in the comments down below.