The two-time champion now has four retirements, twice as many as last year, and has lost 56 points due to mechanical problems alone.
On September 13, just a few hours after the Monza debacle, Alan Permaine was quick to announce that Alpine would be fitting a new floor for the Singapore GP. An innovation that would mean a “great advance in downforce” and that would return the A522 to where it “should be”. Alpine’s sports director considered that double zero in Italy as an “isolated event” and did not see the need for Fernando Alonso premiered “more engines”, despite the water leak suffered in its propellant. Three weeks after those predictions, the Spaniard left Marina Bay yesterday with his fourth retirement of the year and the French team behind McLaren in the Constructors’ World Championship.
Alonso’s weariness was evident by the fence at turn 10, where his car had run out of steam on lap 21. “I didn’t have any warning in the car, or anything like that, but the noise I heard was ugly and I think it was due to something in the engine”, explained the Spaniard. A bitter end to his 350 race in the World Championship, a record ahead of Kimi raikkonen. The worst possible farewell to one of his fetish circuits, in which he has two victories, five podiums and a constant presence in the top-7, even during the time of McLaren-Honda. The calculations of endless blood still boiled through his head.
To these 10 points that escaped in Singapore, we had to add four in Bahrain, eight in Saudi Arabia, 10 in Australia, 12 in Canada, 10 in Austria and two in Italy. A total of 56 just because of reliability issues. If the strategic errors in Imola, Melbourne and Montmel are added to that figure, the amount would exceed 60 points. In the absence of five races to close, Alonso accumulates 59, an almost exact record to last year at this point in the World Cup (58). However, his four withdrawals double those of 2021 and place him in the line of six in his last year at McLaren.
“An Identical Problem”
Oblivious to these cabals, Alpine’s official statement limited itself to confirming “an identical problem in the power unit” of their cars. Otmar Szafnauer, main team of the squire, advanced that the matter will be analyzed “detailedly”. “It is important to identify the origin and put preventive measures in place to prevent it from happening again”, value on the double fault, which had also left out of action to Stephen Ocon on lap 28.
In the weekend that was presented as an alternative to the dominance of Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes, Alpine lost the place to McLaren, with whom it is fighting for fourth place in the World Championship. The windfall of the second safety car favored the whole Andreas Seidlwhich rarely throughout the year has had the fourth fastest car. Daniel Ricciardoa shadow until yesterday, was able to recover 11 positions, while lando norris He rounded off a very consistent Sunday again to cross the checkered flag fourth.
For more ridicule, this misstep coincides with the underground battle against the Woking team, who snatched their young promise two months ago Oscar Piastri. Without going any further, last week, laurent rossiCEO of Alpine, spoke some words that now seem to turn against him: “McLaren has more or less the same strength, but we are a factory team and that gives us a competitive advantage.”
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“Losing 60 points is unacceptable”
“Losing 60 points is unacceptable”
Rossi’s position has been extremely weakened since last January, when he decided to fire his chief executive (Marcin Budkowski) and its non-executive chairman (Alain Prost). Despite closing the 2021 financial year with a profit of 33 million euros and maintaining his “long-term” goal of winning the World Cup, the truth is that the figure of the CEO is increasingly questioned in the power circles of F1 .
One of the most obvious signs that even question its future on the grid is that Alpine fails to extract any performance from the Renault engines. The big losers, obviously, are their pilots. And the honorable mention goes to Alonso, with a car drowned since the end of July at Paul Ricard. Likewise, the French brand is singled out by its own opponents. And it is that the former supplier of Red Bull in the glory days of Sebastian Vettel has run out of customers at the grill. And it seems definitely.
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