Alonso finished "very happy" after a productive day for Alpine

After two days with problems that limited their activity on the track, Alpine finally completed a more or less clean day this Saturday, in which Alonso at the wheel and with the pink livery that they will wear in the Bahrain GP and the Saudi Arabian GP they finished third and with 122 laps.

Alonso will be fourth in the updated table after having been able to ride Haas for two extra hours with Mick Schumacher (to compensate for not being able to ride on Thursday morning), but more than the position, the sensations are good due to the number of tests he has been able to make the gala team.

With C4 tires and in the last half hour of the tests, Fernando Alonso stopped the clock in a 1:32.698 that left him 0.978 behind Max Verstappen, the fastest on Saturday.

“It was a good day of testing for us taking advantage of Esteban’s great work yesterday,” commented the two-time world champion. “We’ve learned a lot with the car and done a lot of laps, so I’m pretty happy.”

Despite the fact that the following will already be the first Grand Prix of the course, Alonso admits that the panorama is not yet clear, but he celebrated having been able to take advantage of the last eight hours.

“We are still learning about the new cars and their setups. We tried a number of things with some clear results, and that’s what you want to do in testing. It was very productive.”

While Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes seem the favorites, Alonso warns that until the first qualifying session there will not be a clear image of the grid: “We don’t know what the others are doing, what program they follow and how much fuel they have, and we have to wait until next Saturday to find out. We will focus on ourselves and our plan is to reach next week with 100% effort.”

For his part, the team manager, Otmar Szafnauer , was also happy with the number of laps the Spanish driver was able to complete: “On the last day we were able to complete a significant amount of work in preparation for the first Grand Prix.”

“The last two days have been just as good for Esteban and Fernando with over 100 laps for both of them, which has allowed us to finalize our preparation well. That also means that we have been able to compensate for the loss of track time in the last day of the Barcelona test”.

Having been able to accumulate so many kilometers has allowed Alpine to further fine-tune the A522 for the course that opens in less than seven days.

“We’re focusing a bit more on refining the set-up and improving a lot of the finer details. A lot of laps means a lot of learning and we’ve made significant progress with the car this week. We look forward to making further improvements in the coming days to continue our best preparation.” possible”.

“Next week we will be racing for real and it is an exciting time for everyone involved in the BWT Alpine F1 Team and for the fans who have waited through the winter for the 2022 season to start.”

All the photos of Fernando Alonso in the Bahrain 2022 F1 tests

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Fernando Alonso, of the Alpine F1 team, settles into his seat

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