The Spaniard followed up his second-place finish at the German Grand Prix on Sunday with solid displays during both first and second practice at the Hungaroring on Friday. He was also one of the busiest drivers on the track and completed 69 laps in total.He was third-fastest in the first session with a 1:23.642 and then improved his time to 1:21.259 in the afternoon to be just 0.241 off Lewis Hamilton's best time of the day.
Despite his impressive showings, Alonso knows Ferrari will need to make up more time on McLaren if they want to walk away with top honours come Sunday evening.
"We finished the planned work programme and that's always a positive start to a race weekend. Now we will analyse all the data gathered and make the best choices for qualifying and the race," the double World Champion said.
"I am pleased I was able to do so much running, especially from the point of view of studying the tyre degradation, which at this track is always a significant factor. The track is still very dirty, as is the norm for a Friday at the Hungaroring: however, we know it will improve each day and by Sunday afternoon, it will be much more rubbered in than today.
"We saw that McLaren looks very strong, as indeed it was last weekend. Now we must try and improve the car, especially in the third sector of the track, where we seem to be suffering more than most."
Alonso celebrated his 30th birthday on Friday and feels he will spend another five season with the Italian team.
"Thanks to everyone for their birthday wishes on my thirtieth, especially to Bernie, who came along to wish me the best along with you journalists during the press meeting!" he said.
"It's nice to celebrate here with Ferrari, a team I will definitely be with at least until I am thirty five."
Technical director Pat Fry admits it's still hard to say where they are compared to their two biggest rivals.
"As usual we had a packed programme to get through, including an evaluation of various configurations both on the aerodynamic front and in terms of the management of the exhaust gases," he said.
"We concentrated principally on the updates to the 150º Italia in the morning and then in the afternoon, we switched more towards finding the best set-up on the car and on a comparison between the two types of tyre Pirelli has brought for this race.
"As you can imagine, there is nothing new under the sun: really just a Friday like so many others. The obvious consequence of that is it's very hard to say where we are compared to our closest rivals. The only thing we can be sure of is that Red Bull and McLaren both seem very competitive, irrespective of the fuel levels they were running."
Source: Planet-F1
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