The first day of the 2022 Formula 1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was rocked by the terrorist attack on local oil company Aramco , and that caused the celebration of the rest of the weekend to hang in the balance. However, F1, through its CEO, Stefano Domenicali , confirmed that they would go ahead with the event, so Fernando Alonso will have a new opportunity to score more points with the Alpine team.
After a gray race in Bahrain, the two-time champion prepared to jump to the Jeddah track with the A522 to improve the sensations. Although at times he was among the five fastest, the Spaniard fell down the table until he finished 10th in Free Practice 1 and 11th in the following session.
Once he got out of the car, he was quite satisfied with the work done on the track where Alpine almost achieved a podium with Esteban Ocon in the last edition: This weekend we have focused above all on the preparation for the race and it went relatively well for us”.
“There’s also more performance in the car than we’ve shown today, so that’s encouraging for tomorrow,” Alonso continued. “It’s a difficult circuit to qualify, with such high speeds and a lot of adrenaline.”
The Spaniard did not have a great performance last season in Saudi Arabia , but he hopes to turn the situation around with this new generation of single-seaters. The French team has made some updates to the fund, and they hope it works to climb positions in the table and close the gap on the leaders.
“The new cars have felt good on this track and are not too different from last year, and I think the lap times in general also look quite competitive. Judging from today’s runs it looks like this generation of cars Formula 1 is better suited to this track than the one we found in Bahrain,” said the two-time world champion.
The one from Alpine will face qualifying with a large part of the porpoising problems solved in his car according to what he suggests, something totally contrary to his compatriot, Carlos Sainz, who was seen to suffer a lot in Free Practice 2 with this rebound effect to high speeds on the straights of Jeddah.
The sports director of the Ensonte team, Alan Permane , also explained the work plan they carried out on Friday: “Today we focused a lot on the tires and evaluating their performance.”
“There has been some degradation of the front tyres, so it’s something we have to look into for Sunday’s race,” he said. “The car has been running well, and it feels a bit more complete than last weekend.”
“Qualifying is once again very tight, and our goal is to get it all out tomorrow to be in the right part of a very tight grid,” said Permane.
