MUST-SEE: ‘Extremely motivated’ Alonso makes his Alpine testing debut at Bahrain

Fernando Alonso took his first laps of 2021 pre-season testing on Saturday morning, as the Spaniard prepares to return to Formula 1 for the first time since 2018 with Alpine.

Alonso wasted no time in getting up to speed, notching up 60 laps of the Bahrain International Circuit and ending up an impressive P2 on the time sheets in Saturday’s opening session. But one person who wasn’t surprised by Alonso’s achievements on his first morning in the Alpine A521 was the team’s Executive Director Marcin Budkowski, who said: “He's extremely motivated, extremely happy to be here – you can see it.

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“Apart from being a quick driver, he's a great professional. He's been in this sport for many years, in F1 and other categories, so his feedback is extremely professional and extremely complete, in terms of the information he passes to the engineers.

“So it's great to work with him from this point of view - and it's going to be useful to help develop this car.”

Ride onboard for the 2005 and 2006 world champion’s fastest lap of the morning session of day two of pre-season testing at Bahrain in the video above.