Loving how accessible the practice sessions are, streamed one last night for a bit. Even if it is Alonso, a single car doing practice laps of an oval is hard to get too excited about. Or perhaps I just lack the knowledge to spot the subtleties that would make it interesting.
it's a bit misleading, he's 4th, but less than half the cars ran, and his average lap speed is 11mph off the expected average of the front runners.
What they're doing is the equivalent of FP1, but several times over. Some will be in race trim , some in quali trim, so nothing can be taken from it. I imagine Alonso is going through a very thorough program of race trim, high fuel, low fuel, quali and running in traffic, so until the flag falls on his 4-lap quli run we won't really know where he stands.
He certainly looks at home. Had a few moments on the way though, his throttle control through the corners is not as smooth as the experienced drivers. Quite jabby at times which may not be good when in heavy traffic as the pitching of that will really screw the aero. Still got some decent running ahead to sort these things out.