Alonso arrives at the penultimate race before the summer break wanting to leave behind the bad luck that affected him at the start of the season, and whose best example was the previous Grand Prix, at the Austrian GP.
There he could not even start the sprint race and a problem in his second pit stop sent him to tenth place. Now comes the appointment in France, where Alpine plays as ‘local’, and Alonso considers that they have everything to finally transform performance into results.
At the FIA press conference this Thursday at the Paul Ricard, the two-time champion was confident before the appointment at home for his team: “I see no reason not to do well here, we have been competitive in the last few races and the car is fast. This is our home race, and we are going to have support from the French fans and we want to treat them to something special.”
Fernando Alonso believes that the second part of the course should be irremediably more positive, and believes that fourth place in the teams’ championship would be a “nice goal”. Alpine currently occupies that place but level on points with McLaren (in fact those from Woking are ahead in the table), and take 30 points to the next pursuer, Alfa Romeo.
“I think we are fast and we have to score points in this second part of the season. We have to try to finish the year in fourth place in the constructors’ championship, I think that is a nice goal for us.”
Thus, after Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes, Alpine would become the ‘best of the rest’, a role that Alonso admits was the goal for this 2022 and that was seen recently: “In Austria we took another step forward, and there again we were very competitive again. We were only behind the top three teams, and ahead of the entire middle of the grid, which was perhaps the goal at the beginning of the season.”
Regarding the Paul Ricard, home of the French GP, he commented: “It is a fun track and although I have raced on several French circuits, I have only raced here twice before in Formula 1. It is a challenging circuit where it is difficult to set up the car correctly. , with quite a few high-speed sections followed by several low- and medium-speed corners.”
One of the things to watch out for this weekend will be track limits, and the FIA has already promised to police them as severely as in Austria. “We’ll see what happens with the track limits,” said Alonso. “It’s not easy to go over the curbs, you can damage the car a lot. But I don’t think it’s as bad as you think.”
In addition, Alonso insisted that he looks at his best level, and lamented the bad luck: “I feel that physically I am driving better than ever! Luck has been our biggest problem. Often everything has escaped us at crucial moments of this season, and hopefully have the luck we deserve as a team.
“I’m sure we can score a lot of points and start climbing the positions in both drivers and constructors.”
Finally, Alonso starred in one of the moments on Thursday when, present in the same room, Lewis Hamilton chose him as the toughest rival in his 300 F1 races. The Asturian replied by praising the Briton, who was his partner in 2007. Despite this high number of grand prizes, the Asturian will still get 46.
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