The Spanish rider seemed to have disappeared in the early stages of the weekend in France because his Alpine could barely enter the fastest mid-range in free practice, but everything changed from Saturday.
With a great recovery compared to what was seen in practice, Fernando Alonso managed to surprise many with his one-lap pace, even more so after seeing the speed shown by his teammate, Esteban Ocon, who complained about the comings and goings in the car performance.
Thus, in qualifying he was able to put the A522 in the last and final round of Q3 , dreaming of being the best of the rest, but Lando Norris sneaked into a party in which the MCL36 updates were the protagonists. However, seventh place was not an impediment for the two-time champion to move up positions at the start of the 2022 French Grand Prix, with an outsider including George Russell.
The Spaniard wanted to get rid of his run of bad luck, and so it was in the 53 laps at Paul Ricard, where he managed to finish sixth , just behind his compatriot, Carlos Sainz, who came from the back of the grid.
Alonso remained within the top six at all times, and with his one-stop strategy he was able to keep the hard rubber until the end of the test to add eight more points overall and cut his personal duel with Ocon.
“It went well, I’m very happy, again the most we could do,” the Asturian told the DAZN F1 microphones while joking about how hard the French event was due to the high temperatures.
“The start was super, from seventh to fifth, and then good management of the race and the tires,” acknowledged the two-time world champion. “In the end we were comfortably sixth, it is what it is, I wish we had many normal weekends because we would have finished fifth or sixth every Sunday.”
Asked about his rivals, notably McLaren, who made several big updates to their car at Paul Ricard, Alonso said: “We have that fight in the constructors’ championship, where they were favourites, so we wanted to finish ahead of they”.
“They were going very fast in qualifying, they beat us by half a second, but in the race it seemed that we could keep up with them, so I’m happy about that,” concluded the Spaniard, who has his seventh consecutive grand prix finishing in the points zone.
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