Alonso’s sprint race ended before it started, when his car was unable to start on the grid or in the pitlane, forcing him to retire without starting. The team later explained that the reason was an electrical problem that they would investigate thoroughly and admitted that they would evaluate the options for this Sunday.
And finally, Fernando Alonso will have a new engine with which to try to come back at the Austrian GP, and which will be ready to use for the rest of the season.
Alpine has fitted Alonso’s car with a new internal combustion engine (ICE, the fourth of the year), a fourth MGU-H, turbo (TC) and exhaust system (EX), and a third energy storage system ( ES) and control electronics (CE).
Not being able to contest the sprint race sent Alonso directly to the last positions for today, which opened the possibility of replacing the affected power unit without the penalty for it being harmful. Thus, the Asturian was going to lose only one position with a Valtteri Bottas who had already taken his sanction before the weekend, but the Finn from Alfa Romeo has changed the rear wing and will have to start from the pitlane (Alonso, from the straight major).
For his part, when he saw the checkered flag of the sprint race, Esteban Ocon stopped with a fuel pump problem, which was similar to the problem that caused his retirement at Silverstone. Alpine has gone to great lengths to ensure there is no repeat in Sunday’s race.
After his umpteenth reliability problem with the Alpine this season, the Spaniard did not hide his frustration: “Another problem in my car, but I don’t know, reliability I think is good, or at least Ocon’s car always works well”.
The #14 calculated that he has lost “maybe 60 or 70 points because of reliability or bad luck” in “a very rare season”.
And after his problem on Saturday, he believes that there is little to do despite the fact that there are still 71 laps to go: “Yes, it’s over. The weekend is over in general, because as we saw, there are little car trains here and you can’t pass
“This year, I feel probably at my highest level, driving intelligently, also thanks to the experience, maybe at the level of 2012.”
Asked if he expected to have fun starting so far back and the prospect of coming back and doing a lot of overtaking, he was pessimistic again: “It’s going to be frustrating with the DRS trains and stuff.”
“So we’ll try to be creative with the strategy and try to get lucky, maybe with safety cars or something. We’ll see, but I think it’s going to be a very, very long race behind a lot of other cars.”
