HUNGARORING -- After qualifying a season's-best seventh on the grid at the Hungarian Grand Prix, Fernando Alonso said the result was in line with McLaren's expectations but well short of his ambitions.
Alonso set the eighth fastest time in qualifying at the Hungaroring but will move up to seventh on Sunday's grid once Nico Hulkenberg's grid penalty is factored in. The starting position is equal to Alonso's best of the year at the Spanish Grand Prix and also comes on his 36th birthday, but the Spaniard said it would take more than P7 in qualifying to get him excited.
"To start 7th and 8th tomorrow, as we will, was our first big goal for the weekend," Alonso said. "It's nice but I've had better birthday gifts! I've won here, I've been on the podium, so to be 7th on the grid, it's the least we could have achieved knowing this is a track where the engine counts a bit less.
"But we're still far behind, so let's try and have some fun tomorrow. There are a lot of things happening in the background for 2018, so let's hope next year we can be fighting for pole positions and not for 7th places on the grid."
With the Ferraris, Mercedes and Red Bulls lining up ahead of him, Alonso says any progress in the race will depend on problems occurring on the cars in front.
"Our result depends more on what those in front of us will do, because we're not in a position to be able to improve our pace by so much. Taking risks or not, our position is this one in terms of pace, so we have to wait for something to up ahead of us to move up; otherwise it will be difficult to do it."