Despite a wretched campaign with Aston Martin and its new engine partner Honda, or perhaps because of it, Fernando Alonso hasn't lost his biting sense of humour.

"I pushed into Turn 15 and I locked up. So, a driver error there, and because of that we are not on pole."

After keeping its powder dry for a big upgrade in Hungary, Aston Martin finally appeared to be at least competing for something after languishing at the back, often even behind newcomer Cadillac. But as was the case in Monza, on the high-speed blasts of Baku's street circuit there is no way to outrun its Honda power unit deficit.

On Baku's 2km-long start-finish straight Alonso was a scarcely believable 30km/h slower than Mercedes' George Russell in second free practice, and while the gap was less dramatic in qualifying the Astons still qualified three seconds behind the Q1 leader, and four seconds off the Briton's eventual pole lap.

As it was, qualifying was irrelevant to Aston anyway as both Alonso and team-mate Lance Stroll took their latest engine penalty, prompting a sizeable grid drop. With Williams's big chassis upgrade allowing it to escape the back of the grid, it is Aston versus Cadillac once more in the battle for respectability.

With the Caspian city the first stop of a three-week stretch including trips to Malaysia and Singapore, though, Alonso was under no illusions that there's anything to gain for Aston by pushing the limits in Azerbaijan.

Fernando Alonso paired sartorial elegance with sardonic wit in Baku

Photo by: Alex Pantling / LAT Images via Getty Images

When asked what his goal for Saturday's race was, the two-time F1 world champion replied: "Try to finish the race, make no mistakes like I did today, and don't crash the car. We are fighting for not many important places, so it's important to keep the car alive for the triple-header. There are three races now, so we need to take care of the stock parts and things like that."

Honda's engine performance and reliability is what it is, so Alonso focused on the variables he could control, which was to improve the car's set-up to the best of his ability. Drivers can only appraise their own performance against the maximum potential that's available from their own package, rather than peering over the hedge all misty-eyed to compare themselves with what neighbouring teams are able to do. Over a brutal 20+ race season with uncompetitive machinery, the latter is no sustainable way to live.

"Today I'm much happier than yesterday with the car," Alonso said, looking for positives. "We made a lot of set-up changes overnight and I felt much more confidence in FP3 and qualifying. I was able to push the car and times were coming easier, 2.5 seconds [2.9s, ed] I think from the top of the field today.

"With the deficits we have on the straights, we made a step forward in the corners since yesterday. Still a long way to go, we need to keep improving both sides, chassis and engine and try to get better."

With power-hungry Baku a write-off even before the start of the weekend, Alonso backed the decision to get his engine penalty out of the way this weekend, hoping Singapore in particular will give him a chance to compete in the midfield again on a much twistier layout, one that's much more playing to Aston Martin's relative strengths.

"It's the same spec, so it's the same performance, but obviously we had to take some penalties to finish the season," the Spaniard added. "I don't know if we have to take more or not yet, but from time to time we need to use the less competitive weekends. This was one of those, to try and get some newer parts for Malaysia and Singapore where we have more hopes."

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  Formula 1Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll hit with Azerbaijan GP grid penalties for Honda F1 power unit changes

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  Formula 1Fernando Alonso’s idea to ‘save’ F1 before the V8 return – and how realistic it is

- The Motorsport.com Team