After some first free practice sessions that had left good feelings in Alpine, the Spanish driver of the French team faced the classification of the 2022 Formula 1 Austrian Grand Prix with the aim of qualifying as high as possible for the two races that still remain to be played this weekend.
Q1 at the Red Bull Ring circuit began very calmly for Fernando Alonso, since he did not suffer in the slightest and finished the round with the fourth fastest time, a 1:06.016 that left him 0.597s behind the best time at that time, work of Charles Leclerc.
In the second round, the man from Oviedo had more complications, but managed to reach Q3 with the ninth fastest time. However, his problems came in Q3, when after a mistake on his first lap, he stepped on one of the famous yellow bananas and damaged the underside of his A522.
Alonso , who aborted that first lap, returned to the track after the two red flags caused by the Mercedes accidents and recorded his worst time of the day, a 1:06.103 that will see him start ninth in the sprint race, three positions behind Esteban Ocon, who was sixth.
As soon as he got off his Alpine , the Asturian driver recognized the good feeling and pointed to the damage to the car caused by his own mistake in his first attempt at Q3 as the main problem in his classification, something that seems to have complicated his weekend. .
“I found the car very competitive today and it was good news to get back to Q3.”
“However, I had a broken floor after going wide on my first lap of Q3, so we lost some performance because of the damage. I think before this happened, we had a target of getting into the top five or six. , which would have been a very good position for tomorrow’s sprint race,” the #14 explained.
Despite these problems, Alonso is confident that he can come back and climb some positions both in the sprint race and in Sunday’s race.
“Now, starting from ninth place, the goal will be to make up some positions tomorrow and I’m sure we can do that.”
“Overall, it’s been a pretty competitive Friday for us, so hopefully we can have a bit of fun in the sprint race and also on Sunday afternoon to score some big points,” concluded the two-time Formula 1 world champion.
Fernando Alonso at the wheel of the Alpine A522 in qualifying for the 2022 Austrian GP
