Formula 1 | McLaren, Alonso ends qualifying with a smile: "Eleventh place is fundamental in view of the race"

Eleventh position for Fernando Alonso at the end of qualifying for the German Grand Prix, the eleventh round of this 2018 Formula One World Championship. The Spaniard, taking advantage of the missed passes of Daniel Ricciardo and Lewis Hamilton, managed to get closer to the top ten, placing himself in an absolutely advantageous position as regards strategy for the race.

The objective will be to achieve a place in the top ten, so as to revive McLaren's hopes for fourth place in the constructors' standings. A different story however for Stoffel Vandoorne, last and struggling with the usual reliability problems of the MCL33.

Here are the words of Fernando Alonso: “I am extremely happy with eleventh place on the grid. For us it's as if it were a small pole position in the middle of the group. Tomorrow we will start on our favorite tyres, and they will be new, so this is a great opportunity to score points. It will be a close fight, but normally on Sunday we pick up a bit of rhythm, which is why we will try to do our best and finish a good race. There were some problems for Hamilton and Ricciardo, which certainly helped us, but we still completed a good qualifying. The car is slowly improving and the new parts are giving the results we hoped for.

“All the other teams are making steps forward, so we maintain the same gap with our rivals. However, I believe we are moving in the right direction. We need both McLarens to score points, so we need to find out what the problem is with Stoffel's car, because it is the second race with less downforce and it is a problem related to that car.", he added.

Here are Stoffel Vandoorne's impressions: “Today's situation is the same as Silverstone and it is frustrating because we have modified many parts of the car to try to solve these problems and it seems that we have not yet succeeded. I definitely haven't forgotten how to drive. From the telemetry we see that there is something wrong with my car, I generate less load, and we can't understand why."

“The team has already put a lot of effort into modifying the parts, but it seems like we're not getting the right feedback. Tomorrow I have nothing to lose and I hope to extract something more from the car", he added.