Alonso unsure of Aston Martin’s position after being left ‘a bit surprised’ by lap times

Fernando Alonso was left “happy” – and a little surprised – with Aston Martin’s performance in Thursday practice at the Bahrain Grand Prix, with the Spaniard ending the second session in third place on the timesheets.

While Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time of the day, Alonso was just two tenths away in P3 and only eight hundredths of a second back from George Russell in P2. The two-time world champion also finished the opening practice hour in fifth position.

READ MORE: FP2: Hamilton fastest from Russell as Mercedes set the pace in second practice in Bahrain

Asked after FP2 how things had felt in the more representative conditions of the evening, Alonso responded: “[It] felt okay, obviously we don’t know what the others are doing, we just complete our programme.

“We know the tyres quite well from the test so we sacrifice FP1 a little bit using the mediums, we concentrated even more on the performance. With two softs now in FP2 we learn a little bit from the car, a few set-up changes that we are happy with the result.