After a start to the season that has left bittersweet feelings for Alpine and Fernando Alonso, the French structure heads to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix with the aim of recovering some of the points lost in the first three races of the course.
Although it is true that the Alpine A522 and the new Renault engine have proven to be competitive, for example, the Asturian driver was fighting to set the fastest time in qualifying in Q3 of the Australian GP before his accident, reliability has put upside down his start of 2022.
At this moment, Esteban Ocon occupies the seventh position with 20 points, while Alonso is 14th with only two units. Despite the fact that the French driver has proven to be slower under equal conditions in these first three races of 2022, the problems in Bahrain, the abandonment of Saudi Arabia and the accident and subsequent strategic errors in Australia, have ended up leaving the Spaniard very touched as far as points are concerned.
However, Alonso still hasn’t lost his positivity and believes that if he manages to complete a smooth weekend, the points will come by themselves, as the performance is there.
“I think performance-wise it looks like we’ve been pretty consistent across three different circuits so far, which is a positive sign, but we know it’s going to be a big development battle this year.
“There are twenty races to go, so there is plenty of time to recover some points that we have lost,” said the Asturian in the Emilia Romagna GP preview.
As for the Enzo e Dino Ferrari Autodrome in Imola, Fernando Alonso admitted that it will not be easy to overtake, but that he hopes to take advantage of the sprint race and the pace of the Alpine on the straight to score points this weekend, something that will not ago since the first race of the campaign at the Sakhir Circuit.
“It’s a track where [overtaking] is difficult, but not impossible, so hopefully we’ll see action from Saturday and also on Sunday. There are a lot of points now up for grabs over three Saturdays [of sprint racing]. I’m hopeful.” to score some points this weekend.
“In some races in 2021, the sprint format worked well. Looking back, Silverstone was very good for me. Formula 1 has made some changes to the format for this season, we will see if these have paid off.” , concluded the Asturian pilot.
This weekend will be the first of the three that F1 confirmed to continue experimenting with the sprint race format, the next ones to host it will be Red Bull Ring, at the Austrian Grand Prix and again Interlagos, at the Grand Prix. from Brazil towards the end of the season.
