After his fiery qualifying in Montreal, Fernando Alonso’s race at the Canadian GP was a bitter disappointment. Certainly for the podium, the Spaniard had misfortune with the timing of the virtual safety car at the start, before engine problems made the Spaniard’s race even more difficult.
Alonso is disappointed with the result of the race and says engine problems meant he had to corner like crazy to avoid losing more positions. Alonso also receives a 5-second penalty after a race for not defending properly from Alfa Romeo driver Valtteri Bottas just before the checkered flag. Alonso dropped back to ninth.
Alonso: Straits on engine problem costing ‘a second’
In fact, with his second starting position and thus first from the front row, everything was set for a good race result for almost ten years. However, the stated goal of finishing the race in the top 5 could not be achieved due to various reasons.
“The engine. That’s the only answer,” Alonso said after the race in a slightly annoyed voice. “We had an engine problem on lap twenty, where the energy had already been cut after exiting the corner.” According to Alonso, the defect cost the Spaniard a full second on the straights, but it could not be corrected during the race.
Time that the Spaniard had to go back somewhere else on the routes. “I drove like a madman through curves,” says the Spaniard in ORF, for example. He did this mainly in curves in front of the points the DRS measured. “DRS was my only defense on the Straits.”
Teammate Esteban Ocon also helped him in this. The Frenchman was ahead of the Spaniard at the end of the race. “Fernando had this little problem with the engine, so I intentionally cut him a bit to give him a chance to defend against Bottas.”
Asked about the problem, Alpine team boss Ottmar Szafner could not say what the problem was after the race. “We don’t know for sure yet, but it looks like an air leak,” said the Romanian. “The temperature rose and he had to manage it. We were limited, especially at the end of the straight.”
Fighting for the podium without engine problems?
Since then, overtaking was out of the question anyway. “I think we are fighting for the podium up to this point,” Alonso said. “At the start of the race I felt stronger than Hamilton. We didn’t have the pace of Sainz and Verstappen, but it was okay to control Hamilton and Mercedes.”
Fernando Alonso also lost place to Mercedes due to the fact that the second virtual safety car was only deployed after Mick Schumacher had retired when the Spaniard had already passed the pit entrance, while George Russell had to There was almost a free pit stop.
Alonso frustrated by ongoing reliability issues
Whatever may be Alonso is satisfied with position seven. “I’m here to try to be better than sixth or seventh,” Asturian explains. “If we don’t make it to the podium or finish fourth, it’s because we have a reliability issue with the number 14 car.”
In 2022, Fernando Alonso was already outraged more often by the defect that hit his car in the Alpine. On Sunday in Canada, he underlined it again. “Maybe we’ve had some bad luck with the VSC. You can’t control the fate, but the number 14 car should have better reliability.”
In the end, Alonso didn’t even finish in seventh place. Due to his defense against Valtteri Bottas in the last lap, where he drove in a wavy line, the Spaniard was later awarded a 5-second penalty and a penalty point. Alonso slipped to ninth place in the overall standings, with Bottas and Gounyu Zhou finishing the race immediately behind.
