Fernando Alonso was surprised by McLaren's Friday pace in Baku but is refusing to get carried away about what the team can achieve later in the weekend.
Alonso finished fourth in FP1, while teammate Jenson Button finished in the top ten in both Friday sessions. Honda had been expected to struggle on Baku's long straight but Alonso thinks McLaren can set its sights on a third consecutive Q3 appearance.
"We're a little bit more competitive than what we expected before coming here," Alonso said. "I still think it's very possible to get into Q3 and if we're there and can score good points this weekend, that will be good news. I think we are in a similar position to the last couple of weeks. Q3 should be the target for both cars."
Alonso had slipped to 11th by FP2 but he is sure he could have finished higher were it not for a stoppage midway through the session, which saw him reaching out of the cockpit to press the neutral button usually reserved for track marshals in the case of a stopped car.
"In FP2 the engine stopped, I couldn't put the gearbox in neutral because there was an hydraulic problem, so the only was to get to the pit lane was pressing the neutral button and luckily I arrived after pressing it a lot. There was a problem with the fuel pressure, according to the team, so the engine stopped and it wasn't easy to get back into the pits because the neutral was not going in as there was not hydraulic pressure because the engine was stopped.
"That's why I had to reach the button that is there for the marshals to press and put the cars into neutral, on top of the cockpit, to get to the pit lane. We lost a bit of time there as I had to use the super-soft tyres where everyone was running on high fuel levels to do their long runs, so that cost me a few places. I'm faster than the P11 I got this afternoon, for sure."