The Alpine team came out of the Formula 1 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix without scoring a single point all weekend for the first time in the entire 2022 season. The French had high expectations after debuting an A522 floor specification in the single-seater. Fernando Alonso, even more so when he reached fifth position in Friday’s classification, in which he could even be third.
However, in dry conditions, the Enstone car sank down the standings as the laps went by in Saturday’s sprint race, and the Spaniard could only finish ninth, falling one place short of the points, while Esteban Ocon remained trapped in the middle zone.
With options to come back with the rain that fell at Imola on Sunday, Alpine wanted to have a quiet appointment to be able to take advantage of the new parts and be able to incorporate them in the two cars in the future, but from the beginning everything vanished.
At the start, Mick Schumacher had a clash with Fernando Alonso, which caused the two-time champion to end the race early. This meant that they were left without the only car with the new floor, so they did not collect much valid information.
The head of the French team, Otmar Szafnauer , gave his point of view on the weekend, arguing that they had some positive things: “Tough day in the office. We changed from the intermediates to the medium dry tires that lasted us all the race to the finish, so we’ve definitely been able to learn how to deal with the compounds.”
“What happened at the end and seeing the pace also makes us see how we can improve in the race and our speed in qualifying,” said the Romanian. “Fernando was very unlucky with Mick [Schumacher]’s spin, which hit him on the right sidepod causing him to retire.”
“There is not much to learn from that, but from Esteban’s car we can, so in two weeks we will be competing again in Miami,” said the Alpine boss after the race on the legendary Italian track.
The CEO of the Parisian manufacturer, Laurent Rossi , also spoke about the appointment that was so bad for them: “This weekend has been disappointing for the team, and it is the first race of the season in which we leave without scoring points. make sure this doesn’t happen again this season.
“We have much stronger potential than that. As a team there are many areas we need to improve, and we also need to eradicate mistakes quickly if we want to reach our ambitious goals,” explained the Frenchman.
Although they were unable to score points and only managed to study the behavior of the tyres, Alpine are positive about what is to come in the future : “Although we are frustrated by the result, we will count on it as additional motivation not to return to have this feeling during the year”.
“I am confident that the team will continue to work hard, and it is imperative that we bounce back next time in Miami,” said Laurent Rossi.
