Alonso laments lack of Friday running

The Spaniard covered only 16 laps in the morning and 24 in the afternoon on his way to the eighth quickest time.

Renault driver Alonso believes his car has improved for the Nurburgring race, but he feels the lack of track time has made judging the improvement harder.

"We had a few more issues to deal with today as we lost some track time with the rain," said Alonso. "So we probably would have liked to make a few more changes to the car and run some more laps, but there was not time.

"It's difficult to judge our competitiveness as it's only Friday and we still need to analyse the data this evening to get a better understanding of our performance.

"We've definitely improved the car, but it looks like the other teams have improved as well."

Team-mate Nelson Piquet also feels Renault is more competitive than in the previous race after posting the tenth quickest time.

"The track was quite slippery early on in both sessions and the rain showers didn't help," he said. "But we still managed to get through most of the programme, looking at the tyres and trying out some of the new parts.

"We still have a lot of data to go over this evening as I was running a different programme to Fernando so that the team could learn as much as possible. It feels like we are more competitive than we were at Silverstone, but it's never easy to tell much on Friday."