Alonso expecting pressure from Mercedes

In the first session, an engine failure shortly before the end, then in the second, a spot of bother with sensors and a basically unstable car – "it was a tough day," said Alonso on Friday afternoon at Interlagos.

One positive for the future, though, as far as he's concerned, the new Pirelli tyres for 2012. At any rate, Alonso has already been preparing for 2012: "We've been fiddling around a bit, mainly with the electronic control for wing settings next year, using loads of sensors to collect masses of data but we ran into a couple of problems."