Confident Alonso ready for Australia ‘tomorrow’

Fernando Alonso is not concerned by McLaren's breakdowns in the second test and feels confident enough to race in Australia if it was "tomorrow".

The MCL33 has broken down on four occasions in the last couple of days, which left McLaren back in their familiar spot of last in the mileage charts.

And while Alonso concedes the plan is not to spend lots of time in the garage, he is not worried about potential reliability issues and says the incidents are all part of testing.

“Of course, the programme we had planned today was longer than 50-something laps,” said Alonso.

“But Stoffel and I faced a couple of issues over the last couple of days and this is part of testing – hopefully now these things won’t happen on lap 10 in Melbourne.

“In a way, it’s useful learning and I’m happy that we’re continuing to make the car stronger and stronger.

“We managed to complete all the important parts of the programme in the morning, so the rest of the day was more about long runs and putting in extra mileage, without needing any specific information to send back to the factory. “

Alonso then stated he would be happy to race the MCL33 in Australia "tomorrow", such is his confidence in the car.

“I’m not worried about the track time we lost,” he added.

“I have one more day in the car before Australia, and I hope we’ll be able to do some long runs and check extra things in order to keep discovering more about our new package, but the fundamental questions we needed to answer in winter testing have been answered, so for me the final day is not crucial.

“If we went to Australia tomorrow, I’d feel okay.”