The Spanish driver faced qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix with the intention of achieving a result that would give him a good position on the grid for Sunday’s race. After sneaking into the last and final round of Q3 by the minimum, the Spaniard came to dream of a fifth place and being the best of the rest, only behind the Ferrari and Red Bull.
However, on his final lap, the Spaniard made a mistake that sent him straight into the wall, leaving no chance to improve on the seventh place he achieved. In the low of Mirabeau, Fernando Alonso blocked the front tires, and his A522 slid towards the guardrail, where it got stuck causing a red flag at the same time as Sergio Pérez and Carlos Sainz, who collided as a result of a chain accident.
The two-time world champion was dissatisfied with the work done in front of the DAZN F1 microphones because he was aware that he could have gotten more loot, and explained how his incident was at the end of Q3.
“I made a mistake at turn 5,” said Alonso. “I started the lap a bit regular, with the brakes too cold, and in the third corner I already started thinking about aborting the turn or continuing, then I looked at the wheel, I made a change to pass the braking distribution to the rear, and for these things in Monaco you don’t have time.
“I lost the braking point for a moment, I could have done something else today, but a mistake leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Let’s see tomorrow with the rain what can be done,” said the Alpine driver about his accident and what he expected for the road.
The track of the Principality is very complicated, even more so with these new generation single-seaters that are so heavy and that are so difficult to get into a corner, and that was something that Alonso accused when trying to push his car to the limit.
“I think qualifying had been pretty good, on the first try we were fifth, so now when we lost that position to Norris and to Russell, we might as well have been ahead of them if I had completed that last try, but as I say, tomorrow is the race and with rainy conditions I think it will be a bit chaotic”, assured the Spaniard.
For Sunday’s race a few drops are expected to fall, making the 3,337-metre Monaco track quite a dance to brush against the walls without getting stuck there, and when asked about it, Alonso said: “It will be very stressful. for us, maybe pretty on TV, but for us it’s going to be a very long afternoon tomorrow”.
