New setbacks for Fernando Alonso and Alpine in the qualifying held at the Hermanos Rodríguez Autodrome after several setbacks prevented him from uncovering 100% of the performance of his car, condemned to seek points to attack on Sunday.
The weekend in America was a real disaster for Alpine, with the first double abandonment of the French firm in its short career in Formula 1. The fact of having abandoned the development of the A521 long ago, focusing all its efforts on 2022, has conditioned each weekend of the team , which forces them to perform perfect Grand Prix to even try to get to the points.
Far from the performance that allowed them to reap a victory, Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso have not been able to emulate the good performance of AlphaTauri, their greatest rival on the table in the fight for fifth position in the constructors’ championship. “Probably yes, a little worse“Alonso confessed about whether the performance of his car had been as expected in Mexico.
“We made some changes to the car before qualifying; I believe that the return could have been much better: Before the red flag we did a 1: 17.8 – 1: 17.7, enough to move on to Q2, but obviously it didn’t count at the time. At the moment of truth I did not unite all the sectors. It’s a shame because maybe we have a little more performance in our pocket»Added # 14.
Mismanagement of the team knowing in advance that Ocon was starting from the back of the grid by replacing several of his power unit components? “I do not know”, the two-time Spanish champion attacked without wanting to give many more details.
«I had to have reached Q2; if I got to Q2 I would have had the slipstream … well no, because I would have kicked Esteban out of Q1, so … We chose to do a run only after the red flag, all teams made two, so we were a little too optimistic. If I got to put the turn well, everything in its place, it would have been enough. Let’s see if next time … »
However, the Asturian does not lower his arms and hopes to score on Sunday. “Tomorrow’s race is going to be interesting, because it is a very demanding circuit in terms of temperature, brakes and everything. We’ll see … I came out last in Austin on a very uncompetitive weekend of ours, and still struggled for 10th at the end. Tomorrow I will start 13th, so the points are very possible, we will try “, said Alonso.
“It was a surprise to be very competitive in Sochi and Turkey. We like certain kinds of curves, we knew that Mexico was not going to be the ideal circuit for our car. The season is still underway, the development of the car was frozen a long time ago and it seems that race by race costs us a little more. We have to stick with it, keep working hard and try to score more points than AlphaTauri in the 4 remaining races, ”he concluded.