Amid the excitement of Lando Norris’ pole, top three places for Carlos Sainz and George Russell and Lewis Hamilton’s incident-strewn final session, another strong performance went under the radar when Fernando Alonso put the Alpine sixth.

A bit of context is required here. First of all, the Alpine has very much not been strong in the wet so far this year – the team struggled in both Imola and Spa in those conditions. Equally, Alonso himself has been talking all year about needing more experience in the wet to get fully up to speed again on his comeback.

Yet on Saturday, he had team-mate Esteban Ocon’s measure throughout qualifying, and was a superb third fastest on intermediates behind only the Mercedes in the still-wet conditions of Q2.

Alonso described it as “a nice surprise”.

“We never had here in Sochi too many opportunities to run in the wet,” he said, “so it was a completely new circuit for everybody in these conditions. And we are not in practice where you can try different lines. So it was stressful. But in our case it was good because I think in a normal qualifying maybe P6 was not possible. So we are happy.”

Ocon was disappointed to be down in 10th, hampered by being one of those who was not able to get in two laps on slicks at the end – the key to a strong grid position.