On the Baku street circuit, Fernando Alonso and Alpine seemed to be really competitive, even in some of the free practice sessions the Asturian driver had managed to place himself first among the rest.
However, from the start of qualifying that feeling disappeared completely, with both Alonso and his teammate, Esteban Ocon, struggling to get through the rounds in Q1 and Q2, a second elimination from which the French driver could not escape.
The Spanish driver from Alpine did manage to access the last qualifying round of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, but he did not get past tenth place, that is, the slowest in Q3.
As soon as he got out of his car, Alonso acknowledged that he expected a better result, but that once again, the sensations on Saturday were very different from those on Friday, something that is already becoming common in the Enstone structure.
“Well, a bit of a mix of feelings because yesterday in the free practice sessions we were going quite fast and we still expected a little more today, but we are 10 and 13, so it is a bit like the reality that we sometimes find on Saturdays when we lose. competitiveness”.
“But I’m happy with the qualifying itself, the laps have been good, I haven’t had any big problems, the car felt good too, but those three or four tenths that separate us from sixth we didn’t have today, let’s see if tomorrow we can recover them”, added the Spaniard.
At the end of the first round and after the red flag, Alex Albon complained about Alonso over braking at turn 15, to which the Spanish driver replied: “Q1 was chaos with all [the cars] at the At the end of the pitlane, I came out on used tires on that lap, so maybe I was going a bit slower than them, but this is Baku. If they started the car a minute earlier, they would have been ahead.”
Thinking about the race, the #14 hopes to avoid incidents and try to take advantage of the mistakes made by the rival drivers, with the aim of scoring points for the third consecutive race.
“We have seen it today, I made a mistake at turn 15, Vettel went into the wall there, the McLarens too, so things are going to happen tomorrow, so you have to be attentive and focused so as not to make mistakes. because it will be a race full of traps,” he concluded.
