Formula 1 news

Mixed Friday results for Alonso

Fernando Alonso experienced a day of ups and downs at Shanghai on Friday. The World Champion of 2005 and 2006 completed the morning's first practice session in ninth position for the French team, before tumbling down to nineteenth in the afternoon.

"Although we are at the bottom of the timesheets, I don't think we should be too worried as we concentrated more on race configuration today," the Spaniard said, who experimented with weight distribution, gearbox and suspension settings during the over the course of the three hours. "Tomorrow morning, in the third free practice session, we will be preparing for qualifying and so I think we can remain optimistic for the rest of the weekend," he continued.

With the field shaken up more than ever before this year, Alonso can hope to make best use of his KERS system during the race on Sunday, with McLaren and BMW being the only other two teams deploying it after Ferrari elected not to. "We need to try to reach Q3, as we did in Malaysia, and aim to score as many points as possible," Alonso decided. "I think overall today we struggled to find the right setup, but even looking at the times, we still have high hopes for this weekend."

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