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Fernando Alonso says he “doesn’t need” the final day of Formula 1 testing at Barcelona, despite McLaren’s lack of running so far this week.
Team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne managed only 38 laps on the first day of the second and final pre-season test on Tuesday, while Alonso was also hit by trouble on Wednesday.
The two-time champion spent over six hours in the garage as the team was forced to replace the Renault engine after an oil leak, completing 57 laps.
Alonso is scheduled to have his final day of testing before the Australian GP on Friday, but the Spaniard feels confident McLaren has all the answers it needs about the car already, and insisted he was not “too stressed” about McLaren’s problems so far.
“Definitely we would have liked to do a little bit more laps today,” said Alonso. “The programme was a little bit longer than 50 laps, but at the end of the day we discovered things.
“This is part of testing and hopefully these things don’t happen on lap 10 in Melbourne, so in a way I’m happy to make the car stronger and stronger.
“All the important parts and things on the programme we managed to do in the morning – the rest of the day was more about long runs and putting laps with no information needed, so I’m not too stressed about the laps lost today.
“Probably we need the last day to do some laps, to do some long runs, to check extra things, but in terms of fundamental answers that we need for the winter tests they are already okay, we have all of them.
“So I don’t need the last day. I will be in the car, I will drive, hopefully we keep discovering new things on the car.”
Alonso reiterated his belief that the new MCL33 has no fundamental issues and claimed all the problems the team has had so far are minor.
“There is nothing fundamentally wrong on the car and all the issues we had they are well under control,” he added.
“Unfortunately we keep discovering new things [problems] every day, but I think that’s putting us in a strong position for Australia.”